“She do drink some,” said the skipper.

Ferrier said, “Yes, she smells like it.”

Down in that nauseating cabin the young man sat, holding his patient with strong, kind hands.  The vessel flung herself about, sometimes combining the motions of pitching and rolling with the utmost virulence; the bilge water went slosh, slosh, and the hot, choking odours came forth on the night.  Coffee, fish, cheese, foul clothing, vermin of miscellaneous sorts, paraffin oil, sulphurous coke, steaming leather, engine oil—­all combined their various scents into one marvellous compound which struck the senses like a blow that stunned almost every faculty.  Oh, ladies, have pity on the hardly entreated!  Once or twice Ferrier was obliged to go on deck from the fetid kennel, and he left a man to watch the sufferer.  The shrill wind seemed sweet to the taste and scent, the savage howl of tearing squalls was better than the creak of dirty timbers and the noise of clashing fish-boxes; but the young man always returned to his post and tried his best to cheer the maimed sailor.

“Does the rolling hurt you badly, my man?”

“Oh! you’re over kind to moither yourself about me, sir.  She du give me a twist now and then, but, Lord’s sake, what was it like before you come!  I doan’t fare to know about heaven, but I should say, speakin’ in my way, this is like heaven, if I remember yesterday.”

“Have you ever been hurt before?”

“Little things, sir—­crushed fingers, sprained foot, bruises when you tumbles, say runnin’ round with the trawl warp.  But we doan’t a-seem to care for them so much.  We’re bred to patience, you see; and you’re bound to act up to your breedin’.  That is it, sir; bred to patience.”

“And has no doctor been out here yet?”

“What could he du?  He can’t fare to feel like us.  When it comes a breeze he wants a doctor hisself, and how would that suit?”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Well, no, sir.  I was in that pain, sir, and I didn’t want to moither my shipmets no more’n you, so I closes my teeth.  It’s the breed, sir—­bred to patience.”

“Well, the skipper must find us something now, at any rate.”

There was some cabbage growing rather yellow and stale, some rocky biscuit, some vile coffee, some salt butter, and one delicious fish called a “latchet.”  With a boldness worthy of the Victoria Cross, Lewis set himself to broil that fish over the sulphurous fire.  He cannot, of course, compute the number of falls which he had; he only knows that he imbued his very being with molten butter and fishy flavours.  But he contrived to make a kind of passable mess (of the fish as well as of his clothing), and he fed his man with his own strong hand.  He then gave him a mouthful or two of sherry and water, and the simple fellow said—­

“God bless you, sir!  I can just close my eyes.”

Reader, Lewis Ferrier’s education is improving.