Hunting the Skipper: The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop

by George Manville Fenn

A few touches convinced the amateur surgeon that the injury was too tightly bound, and after removing the covering he set to work and bathed the wound with the soft cool water till the temperature was reduced, re-bound it tenderly, and soon after had the satisfaction of noting that his patient’s irritation and evident pain had grown less, while when he raised his head and applied the freshly-drawn nut-full of water to the poor lad’s lips he drank with avidity, and then sank back with a sigh of relief. The muttering grew less frequent, and he sank into a quiet sleep.

It was Murray’s turn to sigh now that he had achieved thus much; but it was not with relief, for he was dripping with perspiration, the heat was dense within the hut, and a sense of faint weariness stole over him of so strange a nature that it seemed to him that his senses were passing away.

“I am going to be bad now,” he thought, feeling that perhaps in spite of pluck and effort his time had come.

“What will poor Roberts do?” he felt in a queer, strange way, and somehow it never seemed in the midst of the feeble dizzy sensation that he was of any consequence himself.

“How hot!” he muttered feebly, and he made an effort to crawl out of the hut, and then on and on almost unconsciously until he had dragged himself to where a bright ray of light flashed from the glowing surface of the clear amber water and played upon the great, green, glossy leaves of a banana plant, one from whose greeny-yellow bunch of fruit he had plucked the night before.

That all seemed dream-like, but it did not trouble him, for his nature had prompted him to thrust forward his lips till they touched the water just where the ray shot forth glowing light and life as well, for he drank and drank, and as he imbibed the fluid, which looked like fire but tasted like water, the feeling of faintness grew less, his senses began to return, and he drew back to lie over with a sigh and gaze dreamily at the great arum-like leaves of the banana and the huge bunch of green and yellow finger-shaped fruit.

“Finger-like—thumb-like,” he muttered, “just as if it was so many huge hands resting one upon the other.”

Murray sighed at his fancy, closed his eyes for a few moments to dream about the refreshing water, and soon after opened them again to let them gaze up the curve of a tree till it rose higher and higher, perfectly straight now, and ended by resting his vision amidst the great fount of green leaves which started from the crown and curved outwards.

There was a curious clump of fruit there, flowers too, and small and large nuts; huge, semi-triangular and rounded masses of fibre, and he looked at the high-up cluster, realising the while that hanging far above him, where they would fall in front of the hut, was an abundance of good satisfying food in the shape of pulpy nut, milk and cream, as well as sweet water that he might drink; so that the occupant of that humble hut might partake, but which was out of his reach, for the fruit would not fall and he could not climb.

Murray lay thinking, as his senses grew stronger, of how blessed by nature the black who lived in that hut must be, with a home that he could easily construct, and with such ripe fruits ready to his hand with hardly a care in the production; and then somehow the feeling of envy seemed to turn to equally profound pity, as it flashed into his mind that the poor wretch paid for it at the cost of labour, misery, and despair forced upon him by some of the vilest wretches that lived beneath the sun.