“Sure and now we’ll be having one more worthless shpalpeen on our hands,” O’Brien was saying. “Oi’m not sayin’ as it wasn’t a brave thing that that young feller has been afther doin’, but jist the same it would ’a been bether to have left him there and saved us the throuble of burying of him later.”
“Ay, ay, so say I,” growled another. “He’ll probably die before the week’s out, and ’tis my opinion that he’s better dead than alive, seein’ he’s crazy, poor devil.”
“Hush! he’s conscious,” warned the doctor, as he rose from his kneeling position beside the bunk. “He will do nicely, now, with good care. I’ll be back in an hour to see how he’s getting along.”
As the doctor left the room, the two sailors neared the stoker, who lay with his eyes closed, as if absolutely oblivious to their presence.
“Well, old b’y,” said O’Brien, “how be ye feelin’ afther your duckin’? Pretty spry?”
Slowly the man opened his eyes and let them rest for a long minute on the big Irishman’s ruddy face. When he spoke, the words came haltingly, as if he were groping in his memory for facts that persistently eluded him.
“I don’t seem to recollect,” he said, “just exactly what happened. Was I—did I”—and the fear and pleading in his voice went straight to O’Brien’s heart—“was I—mad?”
“Now don’t you worry about that, son,” O’Brien lied, kindly. “Ye wuzn’t mad, ye wuz jist a thrifle touched be the heat. Oi’ll bet anythin’ ye’ll be up ’n aroun’ as hale an’ hearty as the skipper himself in a day or two.” Then he added in an undertone to his companion, “Bedad, an’ if he ain’t as sane as any man jack of us, me name ain’t Pat O’Brien. Sure an’ Oi ain’t niver seen the loike of it before.”
“Me neither,” the other answered in awestruck tones. “He goes off the boat madder than a March hare and comes back after a dip in the briny and a knock-out punch over one eye seemin’ as right as a trivet. It beats all.”
Meanwhile the man on the bed had been watching the men wistfully, and as O’Brien turned to him again, he asked eagerly, “Please tell me everything. I know I was out of my head, so you needn’t be afraid to tell me the truth.”