“Difficult work here, Dale,” Mr Frewen whispered to me. “One need have well-educated fingers—what surgeons call the tactus eruditus—to work like this in the dark.”
“Terrible,” I replied, and I noticed how his voice trembled. For he seemed to me to be doing everything he could to keep himself from dwelling upon those we had left in the ship.
“Hurt you, my man?” he said to Dumlow.
“Oh, it tingles a bit, sir; but here, stop, hold hard a minute. None o’ them games.”
“What games? I don’t understand you.”
“No takin’ advantage of a poor helpless fellow as trusts yer, doctor!”
“Explain yourself, man.”
“Explain myself, sir? How?”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean, I want you to tell me what you mean, sir.”