“Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin’!” cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. “A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can’t have much faling at all, at all, I’m thinkin’!”
“Ah!” groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet near the spot the colonel had indicated. “Whew! that hurts at any rate, doctor!”
“Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint,” said the other soothingly, exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to extract the leaden messenger. “An’ if ye can’t be aisy, faith, try an’ be as aisy as ye can!”
In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.
“Ah!” ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench his teeth with an audible snap.
“Faith, you may say ‘ah’ now as much as you please,” said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. “For there’s the baste that did you all the damage, an’ we’ll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!”
“Oh! dear me!” the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment to allay the swelling. “Would to God all the mischief could be as easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!”
“Cheer up, colonel, cheer up,” whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O’Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. “We’re going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we’ll rescue your child, I’ll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you’re trying one of the Havanah’s, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. I should like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how those blacks came to board you.”
“Certainly!” said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when Garry O’Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of the choice cigars the skipper offered him. “I will tell you willingly, captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad story of our thrice ill-fated voyage.”
“Thrice ill-fated?” repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly logical turn of mind. “But how’s that, sir?”