"That's all right," cried the skipper, appeased at once, for he evidently thought that Garry had gone back to his cabin and left us in the lurch. "But I've bad news, and sorry to say, O'Neil, we want your services as a doctor now. There's been a bad accident in the stoke-hold and some of the poor fellows are sadly hurt."

"Indade, now!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other, all attention. "What's the matter?

Any one scalded by the shtame, sure?"

"No, not that," said Mr Fosset, taking up the tale. "Mr Stokes has had his arm broken and another poor fellow been almost crushed to death.

He's now insensible, or was when I came on deck so you'd better take some stimulant as well as splints with you."

"Faith, I understand all right and will follow your advice in a brace of shakes," replied the second mate, as he rushed off towards the saloon.

"You'd better go on ahead, Fosset, and say I'm coming!"

With these parting words both he and the first officer disappeared from view, the latter hastening back to the engine-room, while the captain slowly mounted the bridge-ladder again and resumed his post there by the binnacle, after placing four of the best hands at the wheel amidships with old Masters, the boatswain, in charge.

"Ah, what d'ye think o' that now?" observed the latter to me, as I stood there awaiting my orders from the skipper, or to hear anything he might have to say to me. "I said as how summut was sure to happen. That there ship--the ghost-ship--didn't come athwart our hawser for nothink, I knowed!"

Just then there was a call up the voicepipe communicating between the wheel-house on the bridge and the engine-room.

The skipper bent his ear to the pipe, listening to what those below had to say, and then came to the top of the ladder.

"Below there!" he sang out. "Is Mr Spokeshave anywhere about?"

"No, sir," I answered. "He went off duty at eight bells."

"The devil he did, and me in such a plight, too, with that awful accident below!" cried Captain Applegarth angrily. "I suppose he's thinking of his belly again, the gourmandising little beast! He isn't half a sailor or worth a purser's parings! I'll make him pay for his skulking presently, by Jingo! However, I can't waste the time now to send after him, and you'll do as well, Haldane--better, indeed, I think!"

"All right, sir," said I, eager for action. "I'm ready to do anything."

"That's a willing lad," cried the skipper. "Now run down into Garry O'Neil's cabin and get some lint bandages he says he forgot to take with him in his hurry, leaving them on the top of his bunk by the doorway; and tell Weston, the steward, to have a couple of spare bunks ready for the injured men--in one of the state rooms aft will be best."

"All right, sir," said I, adding, as he seemed to hesitate, "anything else, sir?"

"Yes, my boy; take down a loose hammock with you, and some lashings, so as to make a sort of net with which to lift and carry poor Jackson.

He's the only chap badly hurt and unable to shift for himself, so O'Neil says. Look sharp, Haldane, there's no time to lose; the poor fellow's in a very ticklish state and they want to get him up on deck in order to examine his injuries better than they can below in the stoke-hold!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" I answered, darting aft immediately, to avoid further debation, towards the saloon door under the p.o.o.p. "I'm _off_, sir, at once!"

Here I soon got what the Irishman had asked for out of his cabin, and, giving Weston his order about the state room, unslinging the while my own hammock from its hooks and rolling it up, blankets and all, in a roll, I kicked it before me as I made my way down the engine-room hatchway as quickly as I could.

The machinery, I noticed when pa.s.sing through the flat to the stoke- hold, which was, of course, on a still lower level, was working away pretty easily, the piston in the cylinder moving steadily up and down, and the eccentric, which always appeared to me as a sort of bandy-legged giant, executing its extraordinary double-shuffle in a more graceful fashion than when we were going at full speed, as it performed its allotted task of curvetting the up-and-down motion of the piston into a circular one, thus making the shaft revolve; while Grummet, the third engineer, who was still watching the throttle valve, hand on lever, had a far easier job than previously, when we were running with full power before wind and sea, and rolling and pitching at every angle every minute.

But even in the fleeting glance I had pa.s.sing by, the screw still went round in a dangerous way when the stern of the vessel lifted, as some big wave pa.s.sed under her keel, in spite of all Grummet's precautions in turning off steam and I could not help wondering how long the engines would stand the strain, which was all the more perilous from being intermittent.

On reaching my destination below, however, all thought of the machinery and any possible damage to the ship was instantly banished from my mind by the sight that met my gaze.

In the narrow stoke-hold, lit up by the ruddy glare of the furnace fires, the light from which enabled me to see the brackish bilge water washing about beneath the hole in the flooring and gurgling up through the broken portplates there, I saw that a group of half-naked firemen, and others, were bending over a pile of empty coal sacks heaped up against the further bulkhead, dividing the occupied apartments from the main hold, as far away as possible from the blazing fires, on which one of the stokers on duty pitched occasionally a shovelful of fuel, or smoothed the surface of the glowing embers with a long-toothed rake.

I couldn't distinguish at first any one in particular, the backs of all being towards me as I came down the slippery steel ladder, carrying the hammock, for I had taken the precaution of hoisting it on my shoulders on leaving the engine-flat above, in order to prevent its getting wet, while the noise of the machinery overhead and the roar of the furnaces, coupled with the washing of the water, prevented my hearing any distant sound.

Presently however, I recognised Garry O'Neil's voice above the general din.

"Clear off, ye murthorin' divvles!" he cried, waving his arms above the heads of the crowd of onlookers, as I could now see. "The poor chap wants air, and ye're stayling the viry br'ith out of his nosshrils!

Away wid ye all, ye spalpeens! or by the powers, it's a-pizening the howl batch of ye I'll be doin' the next toime ye comes to me for pill or powdher!"

The men cl.u.s.tering round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they laughed at his comical threat--which sounded all the more humorous from the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when Garry was at all excited. G.o.d knows, though, their merriment, untimely as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy with their comrade. They laughed, as sailors will do sometimes, holding their lives in their hands, as is the practice of those who have to brave the manifold dangers of the deep below and aloft on shipboard, even when standing on the brink of eternity.

As they moved away, the fierce light from one of the open furnace doors was beating on their bare bodies and making them look, indeed, the very devils to whom the Irishman had jocularly likened them; the latter looked up quickly, saw me, and beckoned me to approach nearer.

"Arrah, come along, man, with those bandages!" he said. "Sure ye moight have made 'em in the toime since I called up to the skipper. Where are they now, me darlint?"

I produced the roll of lint at once from the pocket of my monkey jacket.

"Hullo!" said he as he took and deftly proceeded to unroll the bundle of bandages, "what's that you've got on your shoulders--a rick?"

"A hammock, sir," I replied. "Cap'en Applegarth told me to bring one down for lifting the poor chap who's so hurt, and so I took my own, which had blankets already in it, thinking it would be warmer for him, sir."

"Begorrah, the skipper's got his head screwed on straight, and you the same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he bent over the pile of sacks in the corner. "Come and see the poor fellow, me bhoy. There doesn't seem much loife lift in him, sure, hay?"

There certainly did not; to me he looked already dead.

Stretched out on the pile of dirty sacking, in a half-sitting, half- reclining position, lay the rec.u.mbent figure, or rather form, of the unfortunate fireman Jackson, his face as ghastly as that of a corpse, while his rigid limbs and the absence of all appearance of respiration tended to confirm the belief that the spark of life had fled.

Stoddart, the second engineer, was kneeling beside the poor fellow, rubbing his hands and holding every now and then to his nose what seemed to me a bottle of ammonia or some very pungent restorative, the powerful fumes of which overcame the foetid atmosphere of the stoke-hold, Mr Stokes, looking almost as pale as the unconscious man, a.s.sisting with his unwounded arm, with which he lifted Jackson's head, his broken one being already set in splints by our doctor-mate.

Blanchard, the other sufferer from the accident, was sitting down on a bench near by, evidently recovering from the shock he had experienced, which really was not so serious as at first antic.i.p.ated, a rather stiff gla.s.s of brandy and water which Garry had given him, having pretty soon brought him to himself.

All our attention, therefore, concentrated on Jackson, who, as yet, made no sign of amendment, in spite of every remedy tried by O'Neil.

"By George!" exclaimed Mr Stokes, a few minutes later when we all began to despair of ever bringing him back to life again. "I'm sure I felt his head move then!"

"Aye, sir," corroborated Stoddart, pressing his hand gently on Jackson's chest, to feel his heart, where a slight convulsive movement became perceptible, at first feeble and uncertain enough, as you may suppose, but then more and more sustained and regular, as if the lungs were getting to work again. "Look alive! he's beginning to breathe again-- and--yes--his heart beats, I declare, quite plain!"

"Hurray!" shouted Garry O'Neil, hastily putting to his patient's lips a medicine gla.s.s, into which he dropped something out of a small vial, filling up the gla.s.s with water. "I've got something here shtrang enough, begorrah, to make a dead man spake!"

The effect of the drug, whatever it was, seemed magical. In an instant the previously motionless figure moved about uneasily, the pulsation of his chest grew more rapid and p.r.o.nounced, and then, stretching out his clenched hands with a jerk, as if he were suddenly galvanised into life, thereby displaying the magnificent proportions of his torso, he being stripped to the waist, Jackson opened his eyes, drawing a deep breath the while, a breath something between a sob and a sigh!

"Where--where am I?" he said, looking round with a sort of far-away, dreamy stare, but meeting Mr Stokes' sympathetic gaze, he at once seemed to recover his consciousness. "Ah, I know, sir. I found out what was the matter with the suction before that plate buckled and gripped me. I have cleared the rose box, too, sir, and you can connect the bilge-pumps again as soon as you like, sir."

Of course all this took him some time to get out.

"All right, my man," answered the old chief, greatly overcome at the fact of the old sailor, wounded to the death, thinking of his duty in the first moment of his recovery. "Never mind that, man! How do you feel now, my poor fellow--better, I trust?"

"Why, just a little pain here, sir," said Jackson, pressing his hand to his right side. "I'm thankful, though, my legs escaped, sir. I've no pain there."

Garry O'Neil looked grave and shook his head at this, and looking too as he cast down his eyes over the lower part of the unfortunate man's body, I saw that the cruel edges of the iron plates had torn away part of his canvas overalls from the thigh to the knee of one leg, peeling off with the covering, the flesh from the bone; while the foot of the other--boot and all--was crushed into a shapeless b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s horrible to behold, the sight making one feel sick.

"It's a bad sign his having no fayling there, Haldane," whispered the Irishman to me very low, so that Jackson could not hear. "It's jost what I thought, sure. G.o.d may help him, but I can't. He'll niver recover, do what we moight for him, niver in this worruld. The poor misfortunate fellow has his spoine injured, and he can't live forty- eight hours, if as long as that, sure!"

He did not tell him this, however; nor did he lead any of the others to understand, either, that Jackson's case was hopeless!