Ben smiled a sickly smile. "Never mind me," he said, "I'm all right. I'd a watch below the day before yesterday, after the captain was past my help. Doctor Rayner forced me to have a snooze on top of his box; said he'd not forgive me unless I did. I tied a lanyard to my wrist and gave him the other end of it, so that he might haul tight and wake me if he wanted me for anything. He never did haul, though. When I awoke he'd slipped his moorings and sailed off on the long voyage, as Tom Harkiss would have said."
The quartermaster drew a sharp breath and leaned over, gazing at the boy with bleared and lustreless eyes.
"Dead?" he cried. "The surgeon dead?"
Ben nodded.
"God help us, then!" said the quartermaster. "And do you say, boy, that there's only me and you left?"
"That's all," answered Ben sadly. And then he added more cheerfully, "Now I'll lay aft and fetch that soup."
Some few minutes later Ben Clews returned with the flagon of warm soup, and proceeded slowly to feed his sick companion spoonful by spoonful. Very soon the quartermaster fell back exhausted.
"That's enough, boy," said he; "I can't manage no more. You'd best take what's left for yourself, and then get into your bunk. The brig's all safe for a day or two, so long as there's no wind. But if a wind should spring up, look you, we shall be as good as a derelict, short-handed as we are, and maybe be blown back again into the Roarin' Forties. You may lay we shan't run aground at the rate we're goin' now, though. I daresay I shall be well again afore we make land. I've got over the worst of it, and'll be able to lend a hand in a day or two. Then we must see about givin' the poor cap'n and the surgeon a decent buryin', as befits gen'lemen." He paused to take breath. "Of course, Ben, there aren't no sort of sign of land yet, eh? You've kep' a good look-out, I suppose?"
Ben was sitting on the corner of a sea-chest pulling off his boots. He leaned wearily back, and answered with a yawn—