By midnight the patient was sleeping peacefully without any symptoms of fever, and Jack cut off communication with the distant liner after promising to “call up the doctor in the morning.”
CHAPTER XXII.
“YOU SAVED MY ARM.”
It was two days later. Young Raynor, his injured arm in a sling, sat on the edge of Jack’s bunk. They had passed out of range of the Parisian, but, thanks to Jack’s quick wit, the crushed arm was getting along well, and the “wireless doctor” had left instructions for the treatment of the case as it progressed.
“Jack, old fellow, you saved this flipper for me, all right, with those Hertzian waves of yours,” said Raynor, “and you know just how I feel about it. But how in the world did you ever come to think of such a stunt?”
“I can’t claim that it was very original,” was Jack’s rejoinder; “in fact, it has been done two or three times before on freight ships that carry no doctors.”
“Tell us about it,” urged the invalid.
“Well,” was the answer, “one case I heard about occurred on board the S. S. Parismina, while she was crossing the Gulf of Mexico. A sudden call came to her from a small island out of the path of regular ships called Suma. A small colony lived there like so many Robinson Crusoes, mining phosphates.
“A tramp steamer happened along once in a while, and they could sail to the mainland, but those were their only links with civilization. To carry the phosphates from the mines to the coast, they had a narrow gauge railway. One day this railway cut up didoes; a train ran away and crushed a workman’s foot.