“Wait till I see how that goes,” he said. “You can’t have any more till I say the word.”
The children cried. The woman hysterically laughed and cried alternately. The man sat still with bowed head and with the tears trickling down his face—whether tears of joy, of distress, or of mere weakness, it was hard to say.
The negro man was too far gone even to swallow. Irv had to turn him on his back and literally pour a spoonful of soup down his throat. Then he said to Ed and Constant:—
“I’m afraid this man is dying. His hands are very cold and so are his feet—cold to the knees. Take some towels—no, here,” seizing a blanket from one of the bunks,—“take this. Dip it into boiling water,—fortunately we’ve got it ready,—wring the blanket out and wrap his feet and legs in it, from the knees down. Then take towels and do the same for his hands. Pound him, too, punch him, roll him about—bulldoze and kuklux him in every way you can till you get his blood to going again! It’s the only way to save the poor fellow’s life.”
By this time Irv deemed it safe to give each of his other patients another spoonful or two of the soup, and he even ventured to pour three more spoonfuls down the throat of the negro.
“He’s reviving a little,” Irv explained. “And as a strong man, with a robust stomach accustomed to coarse food, he can stand more soup than the others.”
Thus little by little Irv and Ed, with such assistance from the other boys as they needed, slowly brought the starving party back to life. As the negro man had been the first to succumb to starvation,—perhaps because his robust physical nature demanded more food than more delicately constructed bodies do,—so he was the first to recover. By nightfall he was walking about on the deck, while all the rest were still lying in the bunks below as invalids.
After awhile Irv stopped him.
“Did anybody ever tell you that you’re an exceptional personage?”
“Lor’ no, boss. Well, yes, some o’ de black folks in de chu’ch done took ’ceptions to me sometimes ’cause I wouldn’t give enough to de cause, but fore de court, boss—”