Sing-hi understood her tone more than her words.
"Plenty muchee helpee," he replied modestly.
At that moment Smith opened his eyes, stared about him in bewilderment, and then uttered a loud groan.
"Your left leg is broken and there's a nasty gash on your forehead," answered the girl tersely.
"Just my bloomin' bad luck. As if----" he broke off suddenly, a new thought having occurred to him. "What the devil will the old man do now? He's been on watch over twenty hours, and there ain't a soul to relieve him. Dykes is on that blighted packet astern--leastways, I suppose he is if she's still afloat--and I'm half corpsed. It's a cheerful look-out and no bloomin' error."
"Don't worry," answered the girl calmly as she took the improvised splint from Sing-hi. "I'll relieve the Captain myself presently."
"What--you!" And Smith, despite the pain he was suffering, laughed outright. "Oh my stars, I can see him going below and leaving you in charge of the ship--I don't think."
"Then the sooner you do think, the better," retorted the girl cheerfully.
Before Smith had time to recover from his astonishment at Miss Fletcher's remark, the business of placing his broken leg in splints was begun. The operation--no easy one with the ship rolling and lurching incessantly--proved so painful that he swooned before he was able to make any audible comment.
"There," remarked the girl when the difficult task had been accomplished, "it may not be a perfect job, but I think it'll answer till we reach port."
"Heap good doctor pigeon," murmured Sing-hi complacently.
Having made the patient as comfortable as circumstances would permit, the girl left the cabin and stepped into the alleyway. Here she paused for a moment, steadying herself against the bulkhead and gazing at the waves breaking over the bulwarks and flooding the decks knee-deep with a swirling mass of turbid, green water. Then, with an abrupt movement as though she had arrived at some momentous decision, she went to her own cabin and hastily donned sea-boots, oilskins, and sou'-wester. This done, she passed out into the alleyway again, just as the bos'n, with a life-belt strapped over his oilskins, appeared at the entrance, staggering and slithering.