“Let’s see,” he said; “how was it? I forgot, sir.”
“Never mind that, then. Where’s the doctor?”
“The doctor, sir?” faltered the old fellow, to Carey’s agony, “I dunno. Ah, I ’member now. Comes to me in the galley, he does.”
“The doctor?”
“No, sir; Old King Cole. ‘Come here,’ he says, ‘and get me something out o’ the forecastle.’ I goes with him, gets to the hatch, and he says, ‘Fetch me up that noo axe as is down there.’ ‘Right, sir,’ I says, and I’d got down three steps when I sees his shadder across me as if he was lifting something, and I turns sharply to see a club in his hand just lifted up. I shies and dodges, but I was too late; down it comes dump on my forrid, and I dropped down into the forecastle.”
“Bob!” cried Carey.
“That’s true enough, sir, and then I seemed to go to sleep with every idee knocked out o’ me. I just recklect thinking I should be better in a bunk, and I lay there dreaming like till you calls me, and that woke me up. What’s o’clock, sir?”
“Time we bestirred ourselves, Bob, to find the doctor. Bob, he must have served poor Doctor Kingsmead the same.”