“One more, sir, a sheeny. I didn’t know his name before, but Mr. Pike got it—Isaac B. Chantz. I never saw in all my life at sea as many sheenies as are on board the _Elsinore_ right now. Sheenies don’t take to the sea as a rule. We’ve certainly got more than our share of them. Chantz isn’t badly hurt, but you ought to hear him whimper.” “Where’s O’Sullivan?” I inquired. “In the ’midship-house with Davis, and without a mark. Mr. Pike got into the rumpus and put him to sleep with one on the jaw. And now he’s lashed down and talking in a trance. He’s thrown the fear of God into Davis. Davis is sitting up in his bunk with a marlin-spike, threatening to brain O’Sullivan if he starts to break loose, and complaining that it’s no way to run a hospital. He’d have padded cells, straitjackets, night and day nurses, and violent wards, I suppose—and a convalescents’ home in a Queen Anne cottage on the poop. “Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr. Mellaire sighed. “This is the funniest voyage and the funniest crew I’ve ever tackled. It’s not going to come to a good end. Anybody can see that with half an eye. It’ll be dead of winter off the Horn, and a fo’c’s’le full of lunatics and cripples to do the work.—Just take a look at that one. Crazy as a bedbug. He’s likely to go overboard any time.” I followed his glance and saw Tony the Greek, the one who had sprung overboard the first day. He had just come around the corner of the house, and, beyond one arm in a sling, seemed in good condition. He walked easily and with strength, a testimonial to the virtues of Mr. Pike’s rough surgery. My eyes kept returning to the canvas-covered body of Christian Jespersen, and to the Japanese who sewed with sail-twine his sailor’s shroud. One of them had his right hand in a huge wrapping of cotton and bandage. “Did he get hurt, too?” I asked. “No, sir. He’s the sail-maker. They’re both sail-makers. He’s a good one, too. Yatsuda is his name. But he’s just had blood-poisoning and lain in hospital in New York for eighteen months. He flatly refused to let them amputate. He’s all right now, but the hand is dead, all except the thumb and fore-finger, and he’s teaching himself to sew with his left hand. He’s as clever a sail-maker as you’ll find at sea.” “A lunatic and a razor make a cruel combination,” I remarked. “It’s put five men out of commission,” Mr. Mellaire sighed. “There’s O’Sullivan himself, and Christian Jespersen gone, and Andy Fay, and Shorty, and the sheeny. And the voyage not started yet. And there’s Lars with the broken leg, and Davis laid off for keeps—why, sir, we’ll soon be that weak it’ll take both watches to set a staysail.”