“You bet,” chimed in the mate; “but for the wash of the water a stopping it, he would have bled to death! Have you got a needle and thread handy, Jasper?”
“Sartain, Massa Allport,” answered the steward.
“Then bring it here sharp, and a piece of sponge, or rag, and some hot water, if you can get it.”
“Sure I can, Massa Allport. De cook must hab him coppers full, sah. Not got Cap’en’s breakfass, you know, sah, yet.”
“I forgot all about breakfast!” laughed the skipper, “I was so taken up with running across this young shaver here. But what are you going to do, Seth, eh? I didn’t know as you had graduated in medicine, I reckon.”
“Why, Cap’en Blowser, I served all through the war after Gettysburgh as sich.”
“Waal, one never knows even one’s best friends, really!” said the captain musingly. “And to think of your being a doctor all this time, and me not to be aware of it, when I’ve often blamed myself for going to sea without a surgeon aboard.”
“That’s just what made me so comfortable under the loss of one!” chuckled the mate.
“Ah! you were ’cute, you were,” replied the skipper. “Kept it all to yourself, like the monkeys who won’t speak for fear they might be made to work! But here’s the steward with your medical fixin’s; so, look to the poor boy’s cut, Seth, and see if you can’t mend it, while I go up and see what they are doing with the ship, which we’ve left to herself all this while.”
Washing away, with gentle dabs of the saturated rag that the steward had brought in the bowl of warm water, the salt and clotted blood that covered over the wound, the mate soon laid it bare, and then proceeded with skilful fingers to sew it up, in a fashion which showed he was no novice in the art.