Galton obeyed instinctively, half carrying the long sagging form to the bunk.

"Hogan!" he thundered at the cyclone on his right, "you and Mulcher stop that! Stop it, Mulcher!" he turned to some of the men. "Part 'em there!

Stop 'em!"

Six navvies, three to the man, jumped and grabbed the combatants.

"Just look, will you?" Madden pointed to Caradoc on the bunk. "You fools have followed a man half mad with a sunstroke! He has blown his nerves all to pieces with a rum bottle, and you bunch of mush-heads have mutinied to give him more rum so he could finish the job!"

The leaderless insurgents stared at Caradoc's still form, then began filing out of the cabin.

"Deschaillon, get that medicine chest out of my bag!"

The Frenchman moved toward the bag indicated, when Madden remembered.

"Here, come back, every one of you!" he cried.

The mutineers flowed in again, entirely subdued now.

Madden was loosening what few clothes Smith wore. He twisted about, facing the crew.

"Some of you fellows stole my medicine chest," he accused boldly. "I want it! The man who has it bring it here!"

The men stood very still, looking from one to the other uneasily.

"Listen, men," repeated Leonard intensely, "I've got to have it--understand? I don't mind your stealing it. I won't say a word to you about that, but I'll manhandle the scoundrel that's keeping it now!"

There was a growled chorus of protests. Madden quivered at his impotence to put his hand on the thief in the crowd.

One of the navvies caught the expression on Madden's face, and blurted, "If I 'ad it, I'd bring it back--'onest!"

Leonard suddenly recalled his suspicions. He looked at Farnol Greer, whose timely shouting and attack had practically quelled the rising. For a moment Madden's old friendship for Smith and his new gratitude for this silent unknown youth struggled, then he said:

"Greer, do you know anything about that chest?"

A look of blank surprise, then indignation went over Greer's heavy serious face, then he said bitingly:

"You sure stand by your pal, all right," and moved out of the cabin without another word.

Caradoc lay dry and burning on the hot bunk, his big hands pressed to his forehead, eyes clenched shut.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Madden miserably. "Hogan, Deschaillon, for God's sake, if you know anything about that medicine chest, tell me--I'm not accusing anybody!"

"Sure, sure," cried Hogan sympathetically, "Oi'm sorry Oi ain't got it.

If Oi only had me chance again I'd stole it long ago!"

"I'm sorree, but I never stole eet either, Meester Madden."

"If I only had bromide!" growled the American, watching Smith's broad hairy chest lift and drop in short breaths.

The Englishman opened his hot red eyes. "What's that to you, Madden?" he asked thickly. The choppy white mustache pulled down in a sneer. "I might as well die now--I'm nothing but a remittance man. A remittance man," he repeated the term with mingled self contempt and bravado. "My people have shipped me--flung me away, broken, no use," he flung out a long hot hand at Madden. "Why do you try to pick up the pieces?" He laughed thickly, which sent wild pains through his head and stopped him suddenly.

Madden stared penetratingly at this outbreak.

"Pour water over him, Deschaillon, Hogan," commanded the American briefly.

As his two helpers hurried out after buckets, Leonard came close to the sufferer.

"Where is it?" he asked shortly.

"Where--what?"

Madden stooped over him. "Where's that medicine chest? What did you do with it? You wouldn't have started that tirade unless you had it."

"You Americans--very keen," panted Caradoc in the midst of his rackings.

"Think you're d-deuced smart--it's in my bag's lining--there was some alcohol in it, so I took it--let it go--don't do anything--for--me."

Deschaillon entered with a bucket of seawater. They stretched the sick man on the floor, and a moment later, the Englishman shuddered under the deluge.

"This ought to be an ice pack," observed Madden, then: "I believe I remember laying that medicine case in my old cabin; I'll see," and he walked out of the mate's room into the darkness.

CHAPTER V

SAIL HO!

Caradoc lay stretched out in a deck chair, on top of the broad wall of the dock, a cool dawn breeze playing over him. He looked across the motley sea toward an opalescent sky reddening in the east.

"No," replied Madden without great interest, from his seat on the rail, "I've no idea what you mean by a 'remittance man.'"

The Englishman's eyes strayed wearily from the limpid dawn to the tiny image of a lion couchant on a small blue enameled shield which he used as a watch fob.

"Among the English--" He paused and began again: "Among a certain class of English families," he proceeded in an impersonal tone, "when a member goes hopelessly astray, that member is sent abroad to travel indefinitely. Remittances are forwarded to him from place to place, wherever he wishes to go, but--" there was a scarcely noticeable pause--"he can't come back to England any more."

"O-o-h!" dragged out Madden in a low voice, comprehending the man before him for the first time.

"So they are called remittance men--always remitted to." Caradoc's long fever-worn face, that was filling out in convalescence, colored momentarily.

"So that's what you were," said the American after a pause; "a remittance man, simply drifting over the face of the earth, supported by your family, boozing your life away, and always longing to see England again?"

"You can put things so raw, Madden," responded Caradoc with a ghost of a smile. "I _am_, not _were_."

"_Were_," insisted the American quickly. "Before your collapse you were a confirmed alcoholic, but you are slightly different now. Your eight days of fever, when Hogan and I had to hold you in bed, must have burned you out, cleaned up your whole system. You are nearer normal now than you were. You have a fresh start. It's up to you what you do with it."

The Englishman looked at his friend with a sort of slow surprise on his face. "I hadn't noticed it, but I don't believe I do crave drink as keenly."