"Skipper's taking a watch below, arter the fog; don't yer go knockin' him up now, Joe."
"Wait till the mate comes. Thunder, why don't yer wrop somep'n round the kid, you loon?"
The big schooner was getting under way again. The mate's voice spoke sharply to the helmsman.
Then he left the quarter-deck and strode rapidly down to the little group amidships. He was a tall man, with a brown, angular face, and deep-set, rather melancholy, blue eyes. His black hair was just beginning to gray above his temples, and several lines, caused more by thought than age, scored his lean face.
"What have we picked up, here, anyway?" he demanded. "Stand off, and let me look."
There was not much to see--a child in a green jersey, with blown, damp hair and a white face.
"You tink he's dead?" A big Swede asked the question.
The mate plunged a quick hand inside the green sweater.
"No, he's not. But he's blind. Get out with that stuff, Jolak, what d'ye think this is? Get me some brandy, somebody."
Jolak retired with the pickled cabbage he had offered as a restorative. No one looked to see where the brandy came from on a ship where none was supposed to be but in the medicine chest. It came, however, without delay, and the mate opened the flask.
"Now," he said, when he had poured some of its contents down the child's throat, and lifted him from the deck, "let me through."
The first thing of which Kirk was conscious was a long, swinging motion, unlike the short roll of the _Dutchman_. There was also a complex creaking and sighing, a rustling and rattling. There was a most curious, half-disagreeable, half-fascinating smell. Kirk lay quietly on something which seemed much softer and warmer than the bottom of the _Flying Dutchman_, and presently he became aware of a soft strumming sound, and of a voice which sang murmurously:
"Off Cape de Gatte I lost my hat, And where d'ye think I found it? In Port Mahon Under a stone With all the girls around it."
"I like that," said Kirk, in a small voice. "Go on."
But the singing stopped immediately, and Kirk feared that he had only dreamed it, after all. However, a large, warm hand was laid quite substantially on his forehead, and the same voice that had been singing, said: