The physician’s instinct awoke in Lang as he bent over the cot. He touched the wrist a moment, pushed back an eyelid to look at the pupil, sniffed at the man’s lips, and took out his clinical thermometer. While it rested under the patient’s armpit he felt carefully over the skull in search of a possible wound.
“How long has he been like this?” he asked.
“Nearly a week now,” Carroll returned.
“How did it start? What brought it on? Did he have any injury—any great shock?”
“No injury. You might call it a shock, perhaps,” said Carroll. “It was ashore. He dropped like dead; we thought he was dead, at first. We brought him aboard, and now we’ve been expecting him to come to for days.”
“Can you bring him to, doctor? We’ve got to have him brought to,” put in the captain, anxiously.
“No, I can’t,” said Lang, crisply.
“He isn’t likely to die, is he?” asked Carroll.
“Extremely so.”
“Hell!” the captain exclaimed in disgust. “Can’t you do something to revive him—electricity or some kind of stimulant? We’ll send ashore for anything you need. We’ve got to wake him up, enough to talk a little anyway, before he dies. That’s what we got you here for.”