A dozen eager hands were immediately stretched downwards; and, the next instant, between them all they lifted out of the forepeak the limp body of a ragged youth, who seemed to be either already dead or dying, not a movement being discernible in the inert, motionless figure as it was laid down carefully by the men on the deck, looking like a corpse.
Captain Gillespie, however, was not deceived by these appearances.
“Sluice some water over his face,” cried he, after leaning down and putting his hand on his chest; “he’s only swooned away or shamming, for he’s breathing all right. Look, his shirt is moving up and down now.”
“I think he must be pretty far gone with starvation,” observed Mr Mackay, bending over the unconscious lad, too, and scrutinising his pinched features and bony frame. “He could only have stowed himself down there when we were loading in the docks, and it is now over three days since we cleared out and started down the river.”
“Humph!” growled Captain Gillespie, “the confounded skulker has only brought it on himself, and sarve him right, too.”
“Shame!” groaned one of the men, a murmur of reproach running round amongst the rest, in sympathy with this expression of opinion against such an inhuman speech, making the captain look up and cock his ears and sniff with his long nose, trying to find out who had dared to call him to account. But, of course, he was unable to do so; and, after glaring at those near as if he could have “eaten them without salt,” as the saying goes, he bent his eyes down again on Mr Mackay and the boatswain. These were trying to resuscitate the unfortunate stowaway in a somewhat more humane way than the captain had suggested; for, while the mate opened his collar and shirt and lifted his head on his knee, Tim Rooney sprinkled his face smartly with water from the bucket that had been dipped over the side and filled.
At first, Tim’s efforts were unsuccessful, causing Captain Gillespie to snort with impatience at his delicate mode of treatment; but, the third or fourth dash of the cold water at last restored the poor fellow to consciousness, his eyelids quivering and then opening, while he drew a deep long breath like a sigh.
He didn’t know a bit, though, where he was, his eyes staring out from their sockets, which had sunk deep into his head, as if he were looking through us and beyond us to something else—instead of at us close beside him.
In a moment, however, recollection came back to him and he tried to raise himself up, only to fall back on Mr Mackay’s supporting knee; and, then, he called out piteously what had probably been his cry for hours previously as he lay cramped up in the darkness of the forepeak:
“Hey, let Oi out, measter, and Oi’ll never do it no more! Oi be clemmed to da-eth, measter, and th’ rats and varmint be a-gnawing on me cruel! Let Oi out, measter, Oi be dying here in the dark—let Oi out, for Gawd’s sake!”