Joe was plainly in need of immediate attention, and Nat devoted his efforts to trying to raise the recumbent lad. He wanted to get him below to the cabin, where there was a well-stocked medicine chest and a supply of reasonably cool water.
But, weakened as he was, Nat couldn’t accomplish the task.
“What’s the matter with me, anyhow?” he asked himself half angrily. “This sulphur stuff must have knocked all my senses out of my head. Where’s Ding-dong, I wonder?”
He rang the engine-room call sharply. But there was no response. No Ding-dong appeared.
“Maybe the signal is out of whack,” muttered Nat, who had noticed some time before that the engine had stopped running. “Guess I’ll go below and see what’s the matter.”
It was the work of an instant to reach the hatchway leading below, and dive into the engine room. What met Nat’s eyes there made him jump almost as violently as he had when the boiling water struck him.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as his gaze fell on the unconscious engineer, “if this isn’t worse and more of it. Poor Ding-dong is knocked out, too; cut on the head. It doesn’t seem to be a bad gash, but it has deprived him of his senses. Well, if this isn’t a fine kettle of fish! In the midst of a boiling sea with two unconscious chaps on my hands!”
Ding-dong stirred and moved uneasily as Nat examined his wound.
“Let me be!” he muttered peevishly; “lemme be.”
“That’s just what I’m not going to do,” rejoined Nat cheerfully.