This rough expedient for a feeding-bottle served admirably. The child's eagerness to gulp in the life-giving fluid was only matched by the tender care of the sailor in his efforts to appease its ravenous hunger.
He was so intent on this urgent task that for a little while he paid no heed to Brand. Jones, forty feet overhead, took the keenest interest in the baby's nurture.
"Mind you don't let it suck the handkerchief into its little throat," he cried. "Not too much, Jim. It's on'y a young 'un. 'Half milk, half water, an' a lump of sugar,' my missus says. Pore little dear! However did it come to live, when that man must ha' bin dead for days? Now, Jim, slow an' sure is the motter. S'pose you shove it into the basket an' let me hoist it up here? A warm bath an' a blanket is the next best thing to milk an' water."
"All right, skipper. Just hold on a bit. She's doin' fine."
"Is it a he or a she?"
"I dunno. But I guess it's a gal by the duds."
The baby, in the sheer joy of living again, uttered a gurgling cry, a compound of milk, happiness and pain.
"There! I told you!" shouted Jones, angrily. "You think every kid is a hardy young savage like your own. You're overdoing' it, I say."
"Overdoing' wot?" demanded the sailor. "You don't know who you're talking' to. Why, when I was on the West Coast, I reared two week-old monkeys this way."
Soon these firm friends would have quarreled—so unbounded was their anxiety to rescue the fluttering existence of the tiny atom of humanity so miraculously snatched from the perils of the sea.