He looked bad, no mistake.  Newman shook his head, gravely, as we turned away.

“It is a task for her,” he said to me.  “She has the healing gift.  The boy is badly hurt.”

A growled curse took my answer from me.  It came from one of the squareheads, from Lindquist, a sober, bearded, middle-aged man, the one man among them who could manage a few words of English conversation.

“Koom vrom mine town,” he said, indicating the tossing form in the bunk.

His blue eyes had a worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke puzzled wrath.  It was evident his slow moving peasant’s mind was grappling with the bloody fact of a hell-ship.  It was something new in his experience.  He was trying to fathom it.  Why were he and his mates thumped, when they willingly did their work?  What for?  “Nils iss goot boy,” he said to us.  “So hard he vork, ja.”  Then he bent over the bunk and resumed the application of his old folk remedy, the placing of wetted woolen socks upon Nils’ forehead.

Before the foc’sle door, we found our mob of stiffs, nursing their hurts, and watching the cabin.  For, as all the world of ships knew, this was the time of day the lady came forward on her errand of mercy.  They were a sorry-looking mob, as sore of heart as of body.

It was not so much medical attention the stiffs wanted, I think, as sympathy.  Bruises and lacerations, so long as they didn’t keep a man off his feet, were lightly regarded in that tough crowd.  But the lady’s sweet, sane being was a light in the pall of brutality that hung over the ship.  She was something more than woman, or doctor, to those men; in her they saw the upper world they had lost, the fineness of life they had never attained.  They had all felt the heartening influence of her presence at the muster; they craved for it now as thirsty men crave for water.  They were men in hell, and through the lady they had a vision of heaven.

Two bells went, and then three, and the lady did not come.  At last Wong, the Chinese steward, came forward.

“All slick man go aft,” says he.  “Lady flix um.”

“Is she not coming forward?” asked Newman.

“No can do.  Slick man lay aft.”

“What have you there?” I demanded, for he bore a glass filled with liquid.

“Dosey.  Mlissa Mate, him say give slick man inside,” and he pointed into the foc’sle.

Newman ripped out an oath.  “Give it here.  A bonesetter, not a dose of physic is needed in there.”

He reached out his hand, and Wong obediently surrendered the glass.  He surrendered something else.  I was standing by Newman’s side, and, saw the piece of paper that passed into his hand with the tumbler.

Newman’s face remained as impassive as the Chinaman’s own.  He sniffed of the draught, made a wry face and tossed it, glass and all, over the side into the sea.  Then he turned on his heel and went into the foc’sle.  Wong went aft, followed by most of the watch.