"Hullo!" said he as he took and deftly proceeded to unroll the bundle of
bandages, "what's that you've got on your shoulders--a rick?"
"A hammock, sir," I replied. "Cap'en Applegarth told me to bring one
down for lifting the poor chap who's so hurt, and so I took my own,
which had blankets already in it, thinking it would be warmer for him,
sir."
"Begorrah, the skipper's got his head screwed on straight, and you the
same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he
bent over the pile of sacks in the corner. "Come and see the poor
fellow, me bhoy. There doesn't seem much loife lift in him, sure, hay?"
There certainly did not; to me he looked already dead.
Stretched out on the pile of dirty sacking, in a half-sitting, half-
reclining position, lay the recumbent figure, or rather form, of the
unfortunate fireman Jackson, his face as ghastly as that of a corpse,
while his rigid limbs and the absence of all appearance of respiration
tended to confirm the belief that the spark of life had fled.
Stoddart, the second engineer, was kneeling beside the poor fellow,
rubbing his hands and holding every now and then to his nose what seemed
to me a bottle of ammonia or some very pungent restorative, the powerful
fumes of which overcame the foetid atmosphere of the stoke-hold, Mr
Stokes, looking almost as pale as the unconscious man, assisting with
his unwounded arm, with which he lifted Jackson's head, his broken one
being already set in splints by our doctor-mate.
Blanchard, the other sufferer from the accident, was sitting down on a
bench near by, evidently recovering from the shock he had experienced,
which really was not so serious as at first anticipated, a rather stiff
glass of brandy and water which Garry had given him, having pretty soon
brought him to himself.
All our attention, therefore, concentrated on Jackson, who, as yet, made
no sign of amendment, in spite of every remedy tried by O'Neil.
"By George!" exclaimed Mr Stokes, a few minutes later when we all began
to despair of ever bringing him back to life again. "I'm sure I felt
his head move then!"
"Aye, sir," corroborated Stoddart, pressing his hand gently on Jackson's
chest, to feel his heart, where a slight convulsive movement became
perceptible, at first feeble and uncertain enough, as you may suppose,
but then more and more sustained and regular, as if the lungs were
getting to work again. "Look alive! he's beginning to breathe again--
and--yes--his heart beats, I declare, quite plain!"
"Hurray!" shouted Garry O'Neil, hastily putting to his patient's lips a
medicine glass, into which he dropped something out of a small vial,
filling up the glass with water. "I've got something here shtrang
enough, begorrah, to make a dead man spake!"
The effect of the drug, whatever it was, seemed magical. In an instant
the previously motionless figure moved about uneasily, the pulsation of
his chest grew more rapid and pronounced, and then, stretching out his
clenched hands with a jerk, as if he were suddenly galvanised into life,
thereby displaying the magnificent proportions of his torso, he being
stripped to the waist, Jackson opened his eyes, drawing a deep breath
the while, a breath something between a sob and a sigh!
"Where--where am I?" he said, looking round with a sort of far-away,
dreamy stare, but meeting Mr Stokes' sympathetic gaze, he at once
seemed to recover his consciousness. "Ah, I know, sir. I found out
what was the matter with the suction before that plate buckled and
gripped me. I have cleared the rose box, too, sir, and you can connect
the bilge-pumps again as soon as you like, sir."
Of course all this took him some time to get out.
"All right, my man," answered the old chief, greatly overcome at the
fact of the old sailor, wounded to the death, thinking of his duty in
the first moment of his recovery. "Never mind that, man! How do you
feel now, my poor fellow--better, I trust?"
"Why, just a little pain here, sir," said Jackson, pressing his hand to
his right side. "I'm thankful, though, my legs escaped, sir. I've no
pain there."
Garry O'Neil looked grave and shook his head at this, and looking too as
he cast down his eyes over the lower part of the unfortunate man's body,
I saw that the cruel edges of the iron plates had torn away part of his
canvas overalls from the thigh to the knee of one leg, peeling off with
the covering, the flesh from the bone; while the foot of the other--boot
and all--was crushed into a shapeless bloody mass horrible to behold,
the sight making one feel sick.
"It's a bad sign his having no fayling there, Haldane," whispered the
Irishman to me very low, so that Jackson could not hear. "It's jost
what I thought, sure. God may help him, but I can't. He'll niver
recover, do what we moight for him, niver in this worruld. The poor
misfortunate fellow has his spoine injured, and he can't live forty-
eight hours, if as long as that, sure!"
He did not tell him this, however; nor did he lead any of the others to
understand, either, that Jackson's case was hopeless!
On the contrary, when he spoke aloud, as he did immediately afterwards,
he seemed in the best of spirits, as if everything was going on as well
as possible, though I noticed a tear in his eye and a quiver in his
voice that touched me to the heart, making me turn away my head.
"Now you mustn't talk now, old fellow, for we want you to husband all
your strength to get up the hatchway to a foine cabin of yer own on the
upper deck, where we're goin' to nurse ye, me darlint, till ye're all
roight, sure!" he said cheerfully. "Here, now, just dhrink another drop
of the craythur, me bhoy, to kape yer spirits up, and you, Master
Haldane, jist hand over that hammock ye've got storved away on ye
shulder, so that we can fix up Jackson comfortable like for his trip to
the upper reggins!"
So saying, the good-hearted Irishman busied himself, with the help of
Stoddart, who was equally gentle in handling the poor fellow, getting
him ready for removal; and when he had been carefully placed in the
hammock and covered with the blanket, the two of them, both being strong
and powerful men, they lifted their burden with the utmost tenderness
and carried him upward to the main deck, where he was put into a berth
in one of the state rooms that the steward had prepared, and every
attention paid him.
Mr Fosset and I helped up Blanchard, the other fireman, he, luckily,
not requiring to be carried; and we then went down for Mr Stokes, who
had refused to leave the stoke-hold until his men had been attended to.
Propping up the stout old chap behind so that he could not slip back
down the slippery steel ladder, as he only had the one arm now to hold
on by, the three of us reached the level of the engine-room all right,
the chief, resting here a moment to give a look round and a word to
Grummet, who of course was still in charge, telling him to slow down
still further and use all his spare steam for clearing the bilge, as the
sluice valves had been opened to prevent the fires being flooded out,
and the pumps were in good working order again.
Grummet promised to attend carefully to these directions, and a host of
others I cannot now recollect, poor Mr Stokes being as fussy and
fidgetty as he was fat, and in the habit of unintentionally worrying his
subordinates a good deal in this way, and the three of us again started
on our way upwards, the old chief leading, as before, and Mr Fosset and
I bringing up the rear very slowly, so as to prevent accident, when all
at once there was a fearful crash that echoed through my brain, followed
by a violent concussion of the air which nearly threw us all down the
engine-room ladder, though Mr Fosset and I were both hanging on to it
like grim death and supporting the whole weight of Mr Stokes between
us.
At the same instant, too, the crank shaft stopped revolving, all motion
of the machinery ceased, and the hatchway, with all the space around us,
was filled by a dense cloud of hot steam!