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Of course you would fasten a line round me, and if I cannot get there you will haul me in again. There cannot be any danger about that." So saying Jack at once proceeded to throw off his oil-skins and sea-boots, while Ben went to the bow of the boat and waved to those on the wreck to slack out more line. They soon understood him, and the spar was presently floating twenty yards further astern.
The vessel had passed Greenwich by this time, and had worked its way out of the mast-forest which guards the approaches of our city. The owners of those innumerable boxes, bags, oil-skins, guitar-cases, whereon the letter K was engraven, appeared to be three ladies, with a slim gentleman of two or three and thirty, who was probably the husband of one of them.
"That's the very chair he was sittin' in, when Luke Jones come in with the word that men were needed. He started right off with Luke soon as he could get into his oil-skins, for 'twas stormin' to beat the band. But he didn't go fur. Almost no time it seemed like, he was comin' into the house agin, and he went into that bedroom there, and shet the door behind him.
But it was a dreary and uncomfortable time for us all, the air being so full of scud-water that it was like being exposed to a continuous torrent of driving rain; despite our oil-skins and sou'-westers half an hour on deck was sufficient to secure one a drenching to the skin, while the spray, driven into one's face by the furious sweep of the hurricane, cut and stung like the lash of a whip.
A few minutes brought them to the level shore where Brooke left May to shelter herself with some fisher-women behind a low wall, while he ran along to a spot where a crowd of fishermen and old salts, enveloped in oil-skins, were discussing the situation as they leaned against the shrieking wind.
His bed was higher from the floor than usual and, moreover, the floor was different. In the dim light he distinctly saw a ship's forecastle, untidy bunks with frouzy bedclothes, and shiny oil-skins hanging from the bulkhead. For a few moments he stared about in mystification; he was certainly ill, and no doubt the forecastle was an hallucination.
It was the first of the rescued crew a lifeless figure wrapped in oil-skins, with one arm hanging limply down, as if broken. Ruby halted, and gave time to come up. "Hey, lads," shouted Old Zeb, who walked first, with a hand round each of the figure's sea-boots; "now that's what I'd call a proper womanly masterpiece, to run home to Sheba an' change her stockings in time for the randivoose."
Here he found Doctor Travis, and briefly stated the object of his visit. "It's a terrible night, isn't it?" the doctor enquired. "Oh, no. Jist a gentle breeze." "But look at your oil-skins. You've been drenched from head to foot." "Well, what of it? A little water won't hurt anybody. The more the better, is my motto." "Very well, then, I'll go," and the doctor reached for his big coat and hat.
In this way, and exposed all the while to the pelting of the heavy tropical downpour, which quickly drenched us to the skin in spite of the protection of our oil-skins, we slowly groped our way along the creek with muffled oars for rather more than an hour, when we unexpectedly found ourselves at the entrance of a fairly spacious lagoon, in the centre of which we speedily made out not one, but four craft moored right athwart the channel, completely barring our further passage.
Then I tucked a double fold of soft flannel above his thorax. As night came on he was more flushed and feverish than ever, and I wished to heaven that I'd a clinic thermometer in the house. For by this time I was more than worried: I was panicky. Yet Duncan, when he came in, and got out of his oil-skins, didn't seem very sympathetic. He flatly refused to share my fears.
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