A promise to this effect was readily given by each of the men, and then the matter dropped, the boat shortly afterwards reaching the landing-place at the bottom of the bay.
The armourer was at once taken out of the boat and carried by Lance’s directions up to the building in which he slept. The miserable man was by this time in a dreadfully exhausted condition; but on the arrival of the medicine-chest Lance mixed him a powerful stimulating draught, under the influence of which he revived so much that Evelin felt himself justified in attempting the operation of amputation. This, with Captain Staunton’s assistance, was speedily and successfully performed; after which the patient was placed in his hammock, and Lance sat himself down near at hand, announcing his intention of watching by the poor fellow until next morning.
The operation successfully performed, Dickinson and his three companions returned to the shipyard, maintaining an animated and anxious consultation on the way. The result of this consultation was that when the four men resumed work they had a great deal to say—after answering numberless anxious inquiries as to the state of the wounded man—upon the subject of Ralli’s treatment of Lance and his threat to flog him. They denounced this conduct as not only unjust but also impolitic to the last degree, dwelling strongly upon the unadvisability of offending a man so skilled as Lance in medicine and surgery, and impressing their audience with the necessity for discouraging—and, if necessary, interfering to prevent—the carrying out of the threat.
And as sailors are very much like sheep—where one jumps the rest jump also—they had not much difficulty in arranging for a general demonstration of popular disapproval in the event of Ralli’s attempting the threatened indignity. Fortunately for himself—fortunately also in all probability for those in whom we are chiefly interested—he allowed the affair to pass over; in going about among the workers that day he overheard enough to feel assured that, for the moment at all events, he was an unpopular man, and as among such turbulent spirits as those with whom he had to deal, unpopularity means loss of power, his own common sense suggested to him the extreme impolicy of pitting himself against them while they continued in so antagonistic a mood. But he was quite resolved that if he could not have in one way what he called his “revenge,” he would have it in another; and from that day forward his insolence and tyranny of demeanour toward Lance and his friends grew more and more marked, until at length it became so unbearable that they were driven to the very verge of desperation.
Meanwhile Lance, sitting there watching his patient, soon saw that he was about to have his hands full. The hectic flush of fever began to chase away the deadly pallor from the sufferer’s cheek; his eyes glittered and sparkled like coals of fire; and as feeling began to return to his hitherto benumbed limbs, and the smart of his recent operation made itself felt, he tossed restlessly in his hammock, tormented with an unquenchable thirst.
“Water! water!” he muttered. “For the love of God give me water!”
Lance gave him some in a tin pannikin. In an instant the vessel was glued to the unfortunate man’s lips, and in another instant it was drained to the last drop.
“More—give me more,” he gasped, as soon as he had recovered his breath.
But this Lance declined to do. Bidding the poor fellow be patient for a few minutes, he went to the medicine-chest and mixed him a cooling draught. This also was swallowed with avidity; and then the armourer lay quiet for a few minutes. Not for long, however; he soon began to toss restlessly about once more; and by the time that the hands returned from their day’s work at the shipyard he was in a raging fever—raving mad in fact; and Lance was at last compelled to have him laced up in his hammock to prevent him from doing himself a serious injury.
Lance Evelin will probably remember that night as long as he lives. In the delirium of the fierce fever which consumed him the unhappy armourer was visited by visions of all the evil deeds of his past life; and Lance’s blood curdled in his veins as he listened to his patient’s disjointed ravings of murder, rapine, and cold-blooded cruelty of so revolting a character that he wondered how any human mind could conceive it in the first instance, and how, after it had been conceived, human hands could bring themselves to perpetrate it. And then the man’s guilty conscience awakened from its long torpor, and, acting upon his excited imagination, conjured up a thousand frightful punishments awaiting him. He writhed, he groaned, he uttered the most frightful curses, and then, in the same breath shrieked for forgiveness and mercy. It was perfectly appalling; even his comrades—those who had shared with him in the dreadful deeds about which he raved—found the scene too trying for their hardened and blunted feelings; and such of them as had their hammocks slung in the same dormitory abandoned them and slept in the open air rather than remain to have their souls harrowed by his dreadful utterances.