Meanwhile Wagtail was a good deal discomposed.
“My dear fellow, hand me over that deviled biscuit.”
Bang handed him over the dish, slipping into it some fragments of ship biscuit, as hard as flint. All this time I was busy poring over the chart. Wagtail took up a piece and popt it into his mouth.
“Zounds, Bang—my dear Aaron, what dentist are you in league with? Gelid first breaks his pet fang, and now you”—
“Poo, poo,” quoth his friend, “don’t bother now—hillo—what the deuce I say, Wagtail—Gelid, my lad, look there”—as one of the seamen, with another following him, brought down on his back the poor fellow who had been wounded, and laid his bloody load on the table.
To those who are unacquainted with these matters, it may be right to say, that the captain’s cabin, in a small vessel like the Wave, is often in an emergency used as a cockpit—and so it was in the present instance.
“Beg pardon, Captain and gentlemen,” said the surgeon, “but I must, I fear, perform an ugly operation on this poor fellow. I fancy you had better go on deck, gentlemen.”
Now I had an opportunity to see of what sterling metal my friends were at bottom made. Mr Bang in a twinkling had his coat off.
“Doctor, I can be of use, I know it—no skill, but steady nerves,” although he had reckoned a leetle without his host here,—“And I can swathe a bandage too, although no surgeon,” said Wagtail.
Gelid said nothing, but he was in the end the best surgeon’s mate amongst them. The poor fellow, Wiggins, one of the captain’s gigs, and a most excellent man, in quarterdeck parlance, was now laid on the table a fine handsome young fellow, faint and pale, very pale, but courageous as a lion, even in his extremity. It appeared that a round shot had shattered his leg above the knee. A tourniquet had been applied on his thigh, and there was not much bleeding.