“He’s got a precious bad crack on his head, sir, and by the looks of him won’t be able to answer that question for some time to come. My advice, Mr. Jukes, is to take him to the hospital.”
“You are right, Marshall. I’m afraid the poor lad has a bad injury. Help me put him in the tonneau and then make a quick run for the nearest hospital.”
By a strange fate it was Mr. Jukes’ car that had approached Jack as he fell senseless to the street. The shipping magnate was returning home, as he had said, from a dinner party on Staten Island. Finding the streets by the South Ferry torn up, he had ordered his chauffeur to proceed along West Street and then cut through the village to Fifth Avenue. Thus it came about that his employer it was who had picked up poor Jack.
Straight to the Greenwich Hospital drove the chauffeur, and in less than half an hour Jack lay tucked in a private bed, with orders that he was to be given every care; and Mr. Jukes was speeding uptown, wondering greatly how the young wireless operator happened to be in that part of the city at that hour of the night.
The next morning Jack awakened in his bed at the hospital with the impression that a boiler shop had taken up a temporary abode in his head. For a few minutes he thought he was in his bunk on the Ajax, then he shifted to the Venus and at last, as he blinkingly regarded the ceiling, memory came rushing back in a full flood.
The dark, deserted streets, the rough, brutal men, the mad run for life, and then a sudden crash and darkness. What had happened? Had they struck him down? Jack put his hand to his throbbing head. It was bandaged. So they had struck him. But he was uninjured otherwise seemingly, so something must have happened to stop the savage fury of the firemen before they had time to wreck their full vengeance on his defenseless body.
He turned his head and saw a young woman smilingly regarding him. She wore a blue dress and a neat white apron and cap.
“A nurse,” thought Jack, and then aloud, “is this the hospital?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but you must not talk till the doctor has seen you.”
“But what has happened? How did I come here?” persisted Jack.