“Nonsense!” said Lincott, as he held out his hand.  “Any medical student could have performed that operation.”

“Then I have another reason to thank you,” answered Helling.  “The nurses have told me about you, sir, and I’m grateful you spared the time to perform it yourself.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Lincott.

“Find a ship, sir,” answered Helling.  Then he hesitated, and slowly slipped his finger and thumb along the waist-band of his trousers.  But he only repeated, “I must find a ship,” and so left the hospital.

Three weeks later Helling called at Lincott’s house in Harley Street.  Now, when hospital patients take the trouble, after they have been discharged, to find out the doctor’s private address and call, it generally means they have come to beg.  Lincott, remembering how Helling’s simple courtesies had impressed him, experienced an actual disappointment.  He felt his theories about the seafaring man begin to totter.  However, Helling was shown into the consulting-room, and at the sight of him Lincott’s disappointment vanished.  He did not start up, since manifestations of surprise are amongst those things with which doctors find it advisable to dispense, but he hooked a chair forward with his foot.

“Now then, sit down!  Chuck yourself about!  Sit down,” said Lincott genially.  “You look bad.”

Helling, in fact, was gaunt with famine; his eyes were sunk and dull; he was so thin that he seemed to have grown in height.

“I had some trouble in finding a ship,” he said; and sitting down on the edge of the chair, twirled his hat in some embarrassment.

“It is three weeks since you left the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“You should have come here before,” the surgeon was moved to say.

“No,” answered Helling.  “I couldn’t come before, sir.  You see, I had no ship.  But I found one this morning, and I start to-morrow.”

“But for these three weeks?  You have been starving.”  Lincott slipped his hand into his pocket.  It seemed to him afterwards simply providential that he did not fumble his money, that no clink of coins was heard.  For Helling answered,

“Yes, sir, I’ve been starving.”  He drew back his shoulders and laughed.  “I’m proud to know that I’ve been starving.”

He laid his hat on the ground, drew out and unclasped his knife, felt along the waist-band of his breeches, cut a few stitches, and finally produced a little gold coin.  This coin he held between his forefinger and thumb.

“Forty years ago,” he said, “when I was a nipper and starting on my first voyage, my mother gave me this.  She sewed it up in the waist-band of my breeches with her own hands and told me never to part with it until I’d been starving.  I’ve been near to starvation often and often enough.  But I never have starved before.  This coin has always stood between that and me.  Now, however, I have actually been starving and I can part with it.”