Breck waked Mr. Wing and they set to work to rig the bosun’s chair and soon had the man lying on one of the transoms in the saloon.
“Now,” said Mr. Wing, “it yet remains for us to get a doctor to him.”
“Mr. Wing,” said Breck in an embarrassed way, “it wouldn’t do for me not to tell you this. I have had three years of medicine at Harvard and was with an ambulance corps in France during the first two years of the war. What I mean is that I can set the leg and I think I had better do it before it swells any more. Jane, you get some waste from the locker to the right of the engine and pack some long planks for the splints. If it is necessary, we can get him into a cast at Portland.”
With deft hands Breck got off the man’s shoe and cut away the duck trousers. Jane, with her head in a whirl, found two suitable boards in the galley, evidently parts of a box in which provisions had come, and she mechanically began to pad them with waste. “That makes him about thirty,” she thought, “because it has been two years since the war. I hope he doesn’t think of me as a perfect kid. I will be twenty-one in a month, anyway.”
A wet and bedraggled Frances clambered over the side and appeared in the saloon just in time to get a weary, grateful smile from the man as he came to.
CHAPTER IX
THE AFFAIRS OF BRECK
The day after Frances’ adventure on the hilltop found both Jane and Frances stiff in their shoulder muscles. Aside from that, there were no ill effects from their long and heavy lift. The man they had rescued was more than hospitably received by Mr. Wing and had been urged to make the boat his home until he was able to go down the sea ladder unassisted. Breck had set his leg with sure skill and the patient had eaten a hearty breakfast and declared that he was in no pain at all.
After breakfast, the little party had gathered around him to hear his story. Out of consideration of his weariness the night before, they had unanimously refrained from questioning him. However, Frances had kept Jane awake well into the night with surmises of her find’s looks and personality.