Upon seeing the skipper Merritt’s brow lightened a little but still he looked black, and when Captain Taber accosted him, inquiring after the welfare of the patient, he growled—
“He’s off his head and no wonder, what with that mob outside and this infernal Dutchman fidgeting about in here ’cause of his half-cent trade. Let’s get him aboard the ship, sir, at once, or he’ll be worried to death, an’ then I shall have to kill a few of these animals to ease my feelings.”
The skipper looked dubious at this proposition, and yet knowing how immense is the recuperative power of men like C. B. if left to nature’s own restorative processes, he felt that probably Merritt was right. So at last he said—
“Look here, Merritt, go down to the boat and get aboard as quick as you can. Rig up a stretcher to carry him on an’——”
“Beg pardon, sir,” interrupted Merritt, “but they’s plenty o’ stuff here in the store to do that with, an’ I can rig somethin’ up in less than a quarter of the time it’d take to fetch it from the ship. An’ whatever’s to pay let me pay it, sir, if you will; it’d do me good to.”
“All right, all right,” assented the skipper testily; “you’re right again as usual. Now I’ll go an’ have a yarn with the Dutchman an’ see if I can’t put him in a better humour. Hello, here’s the doctor. Good mornin’, doc.; your patient isn’t anything to brag about this mornin’, he’s in a high fever, an’ I’m not surprised after the way this gang has been yelling around here all night I’m told. So I’m goin’ to shift him aboard the ship as soon as my fourth mate can rig up something to carry him on.”
“Now, my dear sir,” interjected the doctor hastily, “you surely don’t want to extinguish the feeble flicker of life, do you? If you move that man in his present condition, he’ll die before sunset, now mark my words. But let me see him.” And passing in the doctor examined the suffering man, shaking his head gravely at each new symptom. When he had concluded his examination, during which Merritt watched him as if prepared at a moment’s notice to fall upon him and do him grievous bodily harm, he turned to the captain and said deprecatingly—
“Just as I told you, sir, to move him now must be fatal. He has a good sporting chance of life now; move him, and it’s gone.”
Merritt sprang to the captain’s side and hissed, “Don’t take no manner o’ notice of him, sir. He don’ know th’ first thing about it. You know I’d rather die forty times than my chum should, an’ I say that his only chance is to get him aboard. I’m willing to risk it, the rig is all ready, an’ if you’ll let me hire four o’ these Kanakas, we’ll have him out o’ this an’ inter a safe place ’thout him bein’ a cent the worse for it.”