"But how long would the carrier be in running home?"
"Forty-eight hours; p’raps fifty-six with a foul wind."
"Well, that man will have a stiff leg for life as it is, and he would have died if you hadn’t come across me."
"Likely so, sir, but we don’t have doctors here. Which o’ them would stop for one winter month? Mr. Doctor can’t have no carriage here; he can’t have no pavement under his foot when he goes for to pay his calls and draw his brass. He’d have to be chucked about like a trunk o’ fish, and soft-skinned gents don’t hold with that. No, sir. We takes our chance. A accident is a accident; if you cops it, you cops it, and you must take your chance on the carrier at sea, and the workus at home. Look at them wessels. There’s six hundred hands round us, and every man of ’em would pay a penny a week towards a doctor if the governors would do a bit as well. I’m no scholard, but six hundred pennies, and six hundred more to that, might pay a man middlin’ fair. But where’s your man?"
Ferrier’s education was being perfected with admirable speed.
The yacht came lunging down over the swell, and Freeman shaved the smack as closely as he dared. The skipper hailed: "Are you all right, sir? We must have you back. The admiral says we’re in for another bad time. Glass falling."
Ferrier sang out, "I cannot leave my man. You must stand by me somehow or other and take me off when you can."
The ladies waved their farewells, for people soon grow familiar and unconventional at sea. Blair shouted, "Lennard’s a born hospital nurse, but he’ll overfeed your patient." Then amid falling shades and hollow moaning of winds the yacht drove slowly away with her foresail still aweather, and the fleet hung around awaiting the admiral’s final decision. The night dropped down; the moon had no power over the rack of dark clouds, and the wind rose, calling now and again like the Banshee. A very drastic branch of Lewis Ferrier’s education was about to begin.
Dear ladies! Kindly men! You know what the softly-lit, luxurious sick-room is like. The couch is delicious for languorous limbs, the temperature is daintily adjusted, the nurse is deft and silent, and there is no sound to jar on weak nerves. But try to imagine the state of things in the sick-room where Ferrier watched when the second gale came away. The smack had no mainsail to steady her, but the best was done by heaving her to under foresail and mizen. She pitched cruelly and rolled until she must have shown her keel. The men kept the water under with the pumps, and the sharp jerk, jerk of the rickety handles rang all night.