But if one gave his chief an insolent word, or even look, he was tied up and had forty lashes there and then. That was called by the Kroomen "fum-fum."
On this particular day Surgeon McTavish had gone on shore to shoot anything he might come across among the heath-and-geranium-clad mountains that cluster like the hills of an earthly paradise all around the gulph or bay.
He was an ardent student of Natural History, and his gun helped him in his studies.
But he blamed himself to-day for taking leave on a coaling day, for some poor fellow might have an accident. And this made him hurry back, with his bag mostly filled with rock-rabbits and big snakes fully two hours before sundown.
About half an hour before this a bag of coals had fallen from the dock down upon a poor Krooman, smashing his leg in a very dreadful fashion. The man was carried at once to the sick-bay bleeding terribly below the knee, and a boat despatched forthwith to seek for surgical aid from the nearest ship. There was no doctor on board that, nor on another one. The day was exceptionally fine, even for the Cape in summer, and nearly all surgeons had gone on shore.
"We'd better go straight to the Naval Hospital now," said the middy in charge of the boat.
Meanwhile the man was bleeding to death in the sick bay, when Kep, with all the coolness of a man of fifty from St. Thomas's, came upon the scene. The lower part of the leg was "smashed to smithereens," as the sick-bay attendant said.
"Have to come off, I think, sir?"
"Mind your own business," cried Kep haughtily. "Why on earth did you not apply a tourniquet to the femoral artery?"
"Was taken aback, sir, and couldn't manage the thing."