"Can you give us any assistance, sir? Our mate's badly wounded--seems to
a' lost his senses like, and don't understand."

A deadly pale man was stretched limply on the top of a pile of
fish-boxes. Mrs. Walton said--

"Pray take us away--we cannot bear the sight."

And indeed Marion Dearsley was as pale as the poor blood-smeared
fisherman. Ferrier coolly waited and helped Tom and Fullerton to hoist
the senseless, mangled mortal on deck. The crew did all they could to
keep the boat steady, but after every care the miserable sufferer fell
at last with a sudden jerk across the schooner's rail. He was too weak
to moan.

"Don't take him below yet," said Ferrier. "Lennard, you help me. Why,
you've let his cap get stuck to his head, my man. Warm water, steward".

The man was really suffering only from extreme loss of blood; a falling
block had hit him, and a ghastly flap was torn away from his scalp. That
steady, deft Scotchman worked away, in spite of the awkward roll of the
vessel, like lightning. He cut away the clotted hair, cleansed the
wound; then he said sharply--

"How did you come to let your shipmate lose so much blood?"

"Why, sir, we hadn't not so much as a pocket-handkerchief aboard. We
tried a big handful of salt, but that made him holler awful before he
lost his senses, and the wessel was makin' such heavy weather of it, we