“Ah! the invalid ghosts are up. That ship hasn’t suffered very much,” said Lewis.

When Tom Lennard caught sight of Ferrier he gathered his choicest energies together for the production of a howl.  This vocal effort is stated by competent critics to have been the most effective performance ever achieved by the gifted warbler.  He next began a chaste but somewhat too vigorous war-dance, but this original sign of welcome was soon closed by a specially vindictive roll of the vessel, and Thomas descended to the scuppers like another Icarus.

Ah! blessed sight!  The boat, the good, friendly faces of the seamen; and there, in the stern sheets, the pallid, spiritual face of Henry Fullerton, looking, as Ferrier thought, like a vision from a stormless world of beatified souls.

“Two of you men must come and help to lug my patient up.”

Could you only have seen that gallant simpleton’s endurance of grinding pain, and his efforts to suppress his groans, you would have had many strange and perhaps tender thoughts.  Mr. Blair was watching the operations from the yacht, and he said—­

“Yes, Lennard, the doctor is right; we need a hospital here.  Look at that poor bundle of agonies coming over the side.  How easy it would be to spare him if we only had the rudiments of proper apparatus here!  Yes, we must have a hospital.”

Tom answered:  “Yes, and look at the one with the head broken.  He’ll suffer a bit when he jumps.”

And indeed he did, but he bore the jar like the Trojan that he was—­the good, simple sea-dog.

“Hurry away now, all.  I wouldn’t give the poor old Belle another half-hour,” said the mate.

In a minute or two the cripples were safe, and Ferrier was in the power of Blair and Lennard, who threatened to pull his bruised arms away.  The two gentlemen pretended to be in an uproarious state of jollity, and to hear them trying to say, “Ha! ha!” like veritable war-horses, while the tears rolled down their cheeks, was a very instructive experience.

And now I must speak of a matter which may possibly offend the finer instincts of a truly moral age.  Mrs. Walton totally forgot matronly reserve; she stepped up to Mr. Ferrier, and, saying, “My brave fellow” (it is a wicked world, and I must speak truth about it)—­yes, she said, “My brave fellow!” and then she kissed him!  Blair’s sister, Mrs. Hellier, was more Scotch in accent than her brother, and she crowned the improprieties of this most remarkable meeting by giving the modest young savant two kisses—­I am accurate as to the number—­and saying, “My bonny lad, you needn’t mind me; I have three sons as big as yourself.”  Then the battered hero was welcomed by two joyous girls, and the young Scotch niece said, “We fairly thought you were gone, Mr. Ferrier, and all of us cried, and Miss Dearsley worst of all.”  Half dazed, starving, weary to the edge of paralysis, the young doctor staggered below, ate cautiously a