Used as she had become to hospital work, she went at once to work upon the victim of this outrage. For at first she thought he must have been injured a second time. Perhaps the man who had stretched that cord to trip her and had shouted to her down the passage, had first overpowered Mr. Dowd.
It proved to be that the man was merely asleep. But he was sleeping very heavily, very unnaturally. Ruth had seen people under the effect of opiates before, and she knew what this meant. The chief officer of the Admiral Pekhard had been drugged.
When she had previously spoken to him and roused him after he was hurt, she remembered now that he had not seemed himself. It was something besides the blow on his head that troubled him. Ruth wondered who had given him the opiate, and in what form.
But of a surety, both the chief officer and she had been deliberately placed in such condition that they could not answer the call to abandon ship! Evil people had been at work here. The conspirators feared that Ruth and Mr. Dowd knew more than they really did know, and they had planned that the two should sink with the Admiral Pekhard.
Only, by the mercy of Providence, or by a vital mistake on the part of the plotters, the steamship did not seem to be on the point of sinking. Ruth believed that that danger was not immediate.
She gave her attention to Mr. Dowd while she was thinking of these facts. She bathed his head and face, slapped his hands, and finally put to his nose strong smelling-salts which she found in her bag. The man stirred, and groaned, and finally opened his eyes.
He seemed to recognize Ruth at once. But the power of the opiate was still upon his brain. He could not quickly shake it off. He struggled to his feet by her aid and by clinging to his berth. He stared at her, groping in his mind for the reason for his situation.
“Miss Fielding!” he muttered. “Yes, yes. I am coming at once. The ship is sinking, you say?”
“Oh, Mr. Dowd! everybody has gone now and left us. We are too late to go in any of the boats. But I do not believe the ship is sinking, after all.”
“They—did they blow it up?” questioned the man, striving to pull himself together. “I—I——Why, Miss Fielding, what is the matter with me? I must have neglected my duty shamefully. Captain Hastings——”