"I'll walk," he said.
Ramsay felt a great warmth for and a vast sympathy with this man who, while daring all and losing all, could remain so very human. Marta hovered solicitously near as they all went up to the house and wore their dripping clothes into her immaculate kitchen. Hans Van Doorst sat down, tried to fold his arms across his chest, and winced.
"You're hurt!" Marta cried.
"It is nothing." The Dutch fisherman looked at the three. "It happened out on the lake. We struck something, I do not know what. Perhaps the half-submerged hull of a sunken ship. Then we were in trouble."
Marta was stooping beside him, gently unbuttoning his soaking-wet shirt. Hans Van Doorst looked fondly down at her wet and bedraggled hair, and he offered no protest as his upper body was bared. There was a vast, ugly scar on the right side of his chest, and when Marta touched him there his ribs moved. The Dutchman sat very straight in his chair. Though he must have felt pain, he showed none.
Ramsay and Pieter stood aside while Marta worked expertly. Ripping one of her snow-white sheets into strips, she wound a bandage tightly around Hans Van Doorst's broken ribs. Ramsay and Pieter looked significantly at each other. Such an injury might have resulted when wind or a heavy wave flung the fisherman against something. Probably it had happened when Hans flung himself forward in an effort to rescue a shipmate.
Marta finished her bandaging and stepped back. "You rest now."
He grinned at her. "Fishermen have no time for rest."
"Do as she says, Hans," Pieter urged.
"Come," said Marta. She went to a bedroom, opened the door and waited expectantly.