By the time Lewis had finished his heroic reverie, he was nicely sheeted with ice, for the spray froze as it fell, and he was alongside of the smack that he wanted—­which was more to the purpose.  In a few minutes he was engaged in dealing with a prosaic, crushed foot.  A heavy boat had jammed his patient against the iron side of the steam-carrier.  The man was stoical, like the rest of his mates, but he was in torture, for the bones were all huddled into a twisted mass—­a gruesome thing, ladies, and a common thing, too, if you would but think it.  Ferrier had to use the knife first, for the accident was not so recent as he could have wished; then for near half an hour he was working like some clever conjurer, while the vessel heaved slowly, and the reek of the cabin coiled rankly round him.  What a picture!  That man, the pride of his university, the rising hope of the Royal Society, the professor whom students would have idolized, was bending his superb head over a poor, groaning sailorman, and performing a hard operation amid air that was merely volatile sewage!  A few men looked on; they are kind, but they all suffer so much that the suffering of others is watched with passive callousness.

“Brandy now, my man.  This is your first and last drink, and you may make it a good one.  Don’t give him any more, skipper, even if you have it on board.  You know why?  Ah! the colour’s coming back again.  Now, my lad, we’re going to make your bed up on the cabin floor.  Hand me a flannel; and you, my man, some water out of the kettle.  Now for a clean place.  I’ll set up as a housemaid when I go ashore.”

“Excuse me, sir, but if you thinks you’re goin’ to be let to scrub that ar plank, sir, you’re mistaken.  I’m skipper here, and I’ll do that jest to show you how we thinks of your politeness, mister.  Hand over that scrubber.”

“All right, you obstinate mule; of course you’ll have your own way.  Let me see his mattress, then.  Won’t do!  Which of you durst come with the boat, and I’ll send a cocoanut-fibre one for him?”

“We never talks about durst here, sir.  Not many on us doesn’t.  We’ll go, when you goes.”

So Lewis cheerily ended his task, and when his man was laid out, with a dry bundle of netting under his head, the doctor bent over him only to smile in his face quietly.  He never looked at himself in a glass excepting to part his hair; but he had learned that something in his look tended to hearten his patients, so he gazed merrily at the cripple and said, “Now, when you’re better, tell your friends Professor Ferrier said you were the pluckiest fellow he ever saw.  I couldn’t have borne what you did.  You are a real good, game bit of stuff! and don’t let any one tell me otherwise.”

This unconscionable young doctor was picking up the proper tone for the North Sea; he had no airs, and, when his boat was reeling away to his own vessel again over the powdery crests of the sea, an Aldeburgh fisherman said, “Well, Joe, be sewer, he’s a wunnerful fine gent, that is!  He’s the wunnerfullest, finest gent ever I fared for to see.  And that he is—­solid.”