"Where are you taking him, Mr. Neville?"
"The poor fellow's dying, sir," Neville answered in a low voice.
"Well, where are you taking him?" the chief persisted.
"I'd like to put him in my room, sir."
"A stoker in officers' quarters!" The chief frowned. "Sunday-school discipline!" He disappeared through the engine-room door, slamming it after him.
They did what they could, these seamen, for the injured man; on freighters one of the crew has no business to get hurt. They laid Larry in Neville's berth and went out, leaving a sailor to watch over him.
The sun rose the next day in a cloudless sky, and shone on a brilliant sea of tumbling, white-capped waves. Far off the starboard bow floated a thin line of smoke from a tug's funnel, the first sign to the crew since the hurricane that the world was not swept clean of ships. Two hours later the tug was standing by, her captain hailing the San Gardo through a megaphone.
"Run in to New Orleans!" he shouted.
"I cleared for Galveston, and I'm going there," the San Gardo's captain called back.
"No, you ain't neither."