After several such attempts at intervals, he said plainly the man's life could not be saved by ordinary means.
“Then try extraordinary,” said the captain. “My orders are that he is to be saved. There is life in him. You have only got to keep it there. He MUST be saved; he SHALL be saved.”
“I should like to try Dr. Staines's remedy,” said the surgeon.
“Try it, then what is it?”
“A bath of beef-tea. Dr. Staines says he applied it to a starved child—in the Lancet.”
“Take a hundred-weight of beef, and boil it in the coppers.”
Thus encouraged, the surgeon went to the cook, and very soon beef was steaming on a scale and at a rate unparalleled.
Meantime, Captain Dodd had the patient taken to his own cabin, and he and his servant administered weak brandy and water with great caution and skill.
There was no perceptible result. But at all events there was life and vital instinct left, or he could not have swallowed.
Thus they hovered about him for some hours, and then the bath was ready.