"Give it up. He hasn't spoken yet. It looks as if he were getting ready to do some outside cleaning, for he had on a life-preserver. Funny thing about it, though, that's not his work. He's not even on duty during the starboard watch. The man in the lookout saw him climb out on the bow, shout something up to him, then fall backward into the water. I'll be hanged if I can make it out. Tsang Foo is one of the steadiest sailors on board."
"Tsang Foo!" shouted Reynolds. "You don't mean that man was Tsang?"
With headlong haste he seized the bewildered officer and made him pilot him below decks. Stumbling down the ladders and through dark passages, he at last reached the bunk where Tsang Foo lay with the ship's surgeon and a steward in attendance.
The Chinaman's lips were drawn tightly back over his prominent teeth, and his breath came in irregular gasps. Across the pillow in a straight black line lay his dripping queque. As his eyelids fluttered feebly, the doctor straightened his own tired back.
"He'll come round now, all right," he said to the steward. "Give him those drops and don't talk to him. He's had a close call. I'll be back in ten minutes."
Reynolds crowded into the narrow apace the doctor had left. The fact that he was saved from disgrace was utterly blotted out by the bigger fact that this ignorant, uncouth, foreign sailor had fearlessly risked his life to save him from facing a merited punishment. Reynolds's very soul seemed to grow bigger to accommodate the thought.
"Tsang!" he whispered, seizing the yellow hand, "You are a brick! Number one good man. But my no can take money,—I—"
The steward in attendance, who had stepped aside, made a warning gesture and laid his finger on his lips.
For five minutes the man in the bunk and the one beside it looked silently into each other's eyes, then the drawn lips moved, and Reynolds, bending his head to listen, heard the broken question:
"You—no—blake—bargain?"