“Ay, we do,” shouted Jim Greely in reply. “We’re sinkin’, and our boat’s gone.”
An arm thrown up indicated that the words were understood. A few minutes later and the crew of the Dolphin saw the mission crew launching their little boat. With, such a sea running the venture was perilous in the extreme, but when the mission skipper said “Who’ll go?” he had no lack of volunteers. The boat was manned at once, and the crew of the Dolphin were rescued a few minutes before the Dolphin herself went head-foremost to the bottom. Just as they got safely on deck the mission-ship herself shipped a heavy sea, which washed several of the men into the lee scuppers. They jumped up immediately—some with “Thank God” on their lips, others with a laugh—but James Greely did not rise. He lay stunned and rolling about in the water. It was found on raising him that his right leg was broken at the thigh.
When Jim recovered consciousness he did not complain. He was a man of stern mould, and neither groaned nor spoke; but he was not the less impressed with the kindness and apparent skill with which the mission skipper treated him.
Having received a certain amount of surgical training, the skipper—although unlearned and a fisherman—knew well how to put the leg in splints and otherwise to treat the patient.
“It’s pretty bad, I fear,” he said soothingly, observing that Jim’s lips were compressed, and that beads of perspiration were standing on his brow.
Jim did not reply, but smiled grimly and nodded, for the rolling of the ship caused him increasing agony as the injured parts began to inflame.
“I’m not very good at this sort o’ work,” said the mission skipper modestly, “but thank God the new hospital-ship is cruisin’ wi’ the Short Blue just now. I saw her only yesterday, so we’ll put you aboard of her and there you’ll find a reg’lar shore-goin’ surgeon, up to everything, and with all the gimcracks and arrangements of a reg’lar shore-goin’ hospital. They’ve got a new contrivance too—a sort o’ patent stretcher, invented by a Mr Dark o’ the head office in London—which’ll take you out o’ the boat into the ship without movin’ a bone or muscle, so keep your mind easy, skipper, for you’ll be aboard the Queen Victoria before many hours go by.”
Poor Greely appreciated the statement about the stretcher more than all the rest that was said, for he was keenly alive to the difficulty of passing a broken-boned man out of a little boat into a smack or steamer in a heavy sea, having often had to do it.
The mission skipper was right, for early the next day Jim was strapped to a wonderful frame and passed into the hospital-ship without shake or shock, and his comrades were retained in the mission smack until they could be sent on shore. Greely and his men learned many lessons which they never afterwards forgot on board of the Queen Victoria—the foundation lesson being that they were lost sinners and that Jesus Christ came “to seek and to save the lost.”
Slowly, and at first unwillingly, Skipper Greely took the great truths in. Several weeks passed, and he began to move about with some of his wonted energy. Much to his surprise he found himself one morning signing the temperance pledge-books, persuaded thereto by the skipper of the Queen Victoria. Still more to his surprise he found himself one Sunday afternoon listening, with unwonted tears in his eyes, to some of his mates as they told their spiritual experiences to an assembly of some hundred or so of weather-beaten fishermen. Before quitting that vessel he discovered that he possessed a powerful and tuneful voice, admirably adapted for singing hymns, and that he was capable of publicly stating the fact that he was an unworthy sinner saved by grace.