While this conversation was going on Ralph had been tenderly bathing the little lad’s wound, while the others supported his limp frame. He appeared to be hardly more than eleven or twelve years old, with a meager, starved-looking little body; but his hands were cruelly scarred and mauled as if by hard work. His feet and calves were bare and a tattered shirt and torn trousers formed his sole garments. Altogether, it was a forlorn little scarecrow that they bent over in the dim light of the ruins.
All this time they had forgotten completely about the man they had left behind them, felled by Ralph’s necessary blow. He now was recalled abruptly to their recollection by no less a circumstance than his arrival on the scene.
“What are you doing with that boy?” he demanded roughly.
“Trying to do the best we can to patch him up till we get him to a doctor,” said Ralph sharply. “Did you know he was in the ruins?”
“What is that to you if I did or not?” grumbled the man. “If you must know, I was looking for him when you came up and interfered.”
“And you wasted valuable time which might, for all you knew, have cost a human life, in quarreling with us? You’re a fine specimen—not!” growled out Ralph. He was mad clear through at the other’s brutal cynicism. But he was to get madder still presently.
“Don’t you dare take that boy off this island,” the man said peremptorily.
“And why not?” demanded Ralph. “Surely it’s plain enough, even to as callous a being as you are, that he needs medical attention.”
“I can attend to him. If you take him away from here, you do it at your peril,” was the extraordinary reply.
“Great Scott, man, do you call yourself a human being?” burst out Percy Simmons.