Adventure stories; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Love stories; Mutiny -- Fiction; Sea stories
Here was cold logic, but Rainey saw the force of it. Hansen came up
early to split the watch and put their schedule right again, and Lund
went below with Rainey. Lund ordered Tamada to bring a bottle and
glasses, and they sat down at the table. Rainey needed the kick of a
drink, and took one.
As Lund was raising his glass with a toast of "Here's to luck," the
skipper's door opened and the girl appeared. She looked like a ghost.
Her hair was disheveled and her eyes stared at them without seeming
recognition. But she spoke, in a flat toneless voice.
"My father is dead! I--" she faltered, swayed, and seemed to swoon as
she sank toward the floor. Rainey darted forward, but Lund was quicker
and swooped her up in his arms as if she had been a feather, took her to
the table, set her in a chair, dabbled a napkin in some water and
applied it to her brows.
"Chafe her wrists," he ordered Rainey. "Undo that top button of her
blouse. That's enough; she ain't got on corsets. She'll come through.
Plumb worn out. That's all."
He handled her, deftly, as a nurse would a child. Rainey chafed the
slender wrists and beat her palms, and soon she opened her eyes and
sighed. Then she pulled away from Lund, bending over her, and got to her
feet.
"I must go to my father," she said. "He is dead."
They followed her into the cabin, and Lund bent over the bunk.
"Looks like it," he whispered to Rainey. Then he tore open the skipper's
vest and shirt and laid his head on his chest. The girl made a faint
motion as if to stop him, but did not hinder him. She was at the end of
her own strength from weariness and worry. Lund suddenly raised his
head.
"There's a flutter," he announced. "He ain't gone yit. Get Tamada an'
some brandy."
The Japanese, by some intuition, was already on hand, and produced the
brandy. Rainey poured out a measure. The captain's teeth were tightly
clenched. Lund spraddled one great hand across his jaws, pressing at
their junction, forcing them apart, firmly, but gently enough, while
Rainey squeezed in a few drops of brandy from the corner of his soaked
handkerchief. Lund stroked the sick man's throat, and he swallowed
automatically.
"More brandy," ordered Lund.
With the next dose there came signs of revival, a low moan from the
skipper. The girl flew to his side. Tamada, standing by with the
bottle, stepped forward, handed the brandy to Rainey, and rolled up the
lid of an eye, looking closely at the pupil.
"I study medicine at Tokio," he said.
"Why didn't ye say so before?" demanded Lund. It did not occur to any of
them to doubt Tamada's word. There was an air of professional assurance
and an efficiency about him that carried weight. "What can you do for
him? There's a medicine chest in Carlsen's room."
"I was hired to cook," said Tamada quietly. "I should not have been
permit to interfere. It is not my business if a white man makes a fool
of himself. Now we want morphine and hypodermic syringe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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