“And now, Skipper Fox,” continued Fred facetiously, “as I’m a sort of doctor, you must allow me to prescribe something for your complaint. Here, boy,” he added, hailing one of his crew, “fetch Skipper Fox a draught o’ that physic—the brown stuff that you keep in the kettle.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered a youthful voice, and in another minute Pat Stiver forced his way through the crowd, bearing in his hand a large cup or bowl of coffee.
“It’s not exactly the tipple I’m used to,” said Fox, accepting the cup with a grin, and wisely resolving to make the best of circumstances, all the more readily that he observed other visitors had been, or still were, enjoying the same beverage. “Howsever, it’s not to be expected that sick men shall have their physic exactly to their likin’, so I thank ’ee all the same, Dr Martin!”
This reply was received with much approval, and the character of Groggy Fox immediately experienced a considerable rise in the estimation of his comrades of the fleet.
Attention was drawn from him just then by the approach of another boat.
“There is some genuine surgeon’s work coming to you in that boat, Fred, if I mistake not,” remarked Stephen Lockley, as he stood beside his old friend.
“Hasn’t that man in the stern got his head tied up?”
“Looks like it.”
“By the way, what of your uncle, Dick Martin?” asked the Admiral. “It was you that picked him up, wasn’t it?”
This reference to the sad event which had occurred that morning solemnised the fishermen assembled on the Sunbeam’s deck, and they stood listening with sympathetic expressions as Fred narrated what he had seen of the catastrophe, and told that his uncle was evidently nothing the worse of it, and was lying asleep in the cabin, where everything had been done for his recovery and comfort.