“I can't understand”--thus Rocky--“I don't see how it could have happened. It couldn't have been my fault.”
Doane saw now that his head had been burned above one ear; and the hand that pressed his face was blistered white.
“It _wasn't_ my fault! I found myself out on deck. I tried to get the hose.”
Doane tenderly lifted the little princess.
Rocky was still incoherently talking; promising reform; blaming himself in the next breath after hotly defending himself. His voice was somewhat thick. He was drowsy--swayed and stumbled as he moved toward the stairs.
Doane, speaking gently in Chinese to the child, stood a moment considering. The heat was becoming intolerable. It wouldn't do to keep the little one here. He carried her down the stairs.
Below, the boy faced him. “I'm no good,” he whimpered. “I can't wake up. Hit me--do something--I won't be like this.”
Doane considered him during a brief instant. They were standing under a light, their feet slipping on the deck, bodies lying about. With the flat of his hand, then, Duane struck the side of the boy's head that was not burned; struck harder than he meant, for the boy went down, and then, after sprawling about, got muttering to his feet.
“It's all right!” he cried unsteadily. “I asked you to do it. I'm going to get hold of myself. I've been no good--rotten. I've touched bottom. But I'm going to fight it out--get somewhere.” His egotism, even now amazingly held him. Even as he spoke he was dramatizing himself. But his pupils were widening a little; he was in earnest, crying bitterly out of a drugged mind and conscience. And Doane, looking down at him, felt stirring in his heart, though curiously mixed with a twinge of jealousy for his youth and the hopes before him, something of the sympathy his long deep experience had instilled there toward blindly struggling young folk. Boys, after all, were normally egotists. And Heaven knew this boy had so far been given no sort of chance!
Doane led the way clear aft. The heat was terrific. From a row of fire buckets he sprinkled the little princess; bathed her temples. The water was warm, but it helped.
Young Kane, with a nervous movement, suddenly picked up one, then another, of the buckets and dashed them over himself. Distinctly he was coming to life. “We may never come out of this, Mr. Doane,” he said. “It's a terrible fix.” More and more, as he came slowly awake, he was dramatizing the situation and himself. “But I want to say this. I've never known a man like you. You're fine--you're big--you've helped me as no one else has. I'll never be like you--it isn't in me. I've already gone as close to hell as a man can go and perhaps still save himself--”