“Golly, Massa Allport! I didn’t know you was so clebbah!” said the steward admiringly.
“You don’t know everything, you see, Jasper,” said the other good-humouredly. “There, I think that will do now, with a strip or two of plaster which I have here,” producing some diachylon from a pocket-book. “How do you feel now?” he added, addressing himself to the boy, who had kept his eyes fixed on his face in the same meaningless stare as when he had first opened them. “Better?”
But he got no reply.
The boy did not even move his lips, much less utter a sound, although he was now well warmed, and there was life in his rigid limbs and colour in his face, while his faint breathing was regular, and his pulse even.
“He looks very strange,” Mr Rawlings said. “Concussion of the brain, I should say.”
The sailor-surgeon was puzzled.
“I guess he’s dumb, and deaf too,” he said to the passenger who had been acting as his medical assistant, and watching the mate’s operations with much interest. “But no,” he added presently; “a boy with such eyes and such a face could never be so afflicted! I’ve seen scores of deaf-mutes, and you could never mistake their countenances. I know what it is, he has received such a shock to the system that it has paralysed his nerves—that’s it!”
“It’s either that or concussion,” the passenger argued.
And the steward, who did not know what to say, and would indeed now have endorsed any opinion that the mate had propounded after what he had seen of his practical skill, gave a confirmatory nod, expressive of his entire approval of the other’s dictum.
“Yes, Jasper,” replied the other, “it’s only a temporary shock to the system, and rest and attention will work it off in a short time.”