s shirt.

"I wants t' get this here clear in my mind," he said, slowly. "Is you
askin' me t' fetch that sick woman aboard this here ship?"

The doctor leaned over the table to spit.

"Has I got it right, zur?"

In the pause the spectators softly withdrew to the further end of the
cabin.

"If he won't fetch her aboard, Jagger," said the doctor, turning to the
dog's master, "she'll do very well, I'll be bound, till we get back from
the north. Eh, Jagger? If he cared very much, he'd fetch her aboard,
wouldn't he?"

Jagger laughed.

"Ay, she'll do very well," the doctor repeated, now addressing my
father, "till we get back. I'll take a look at her then."

I saw the color rush into my father's face. Skipper Tommy laid a
restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Easy, now, Skipper David!" he muttered.

"Is I right," said my father, bending close to the doctor's face, "in
thinkin' you says you _won't_ come ashore?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"Is I right," pursued my father, his voice rising, "in thinkin' the
gov'ment pays you t' tend the sick o' this coast?"

"That's my business," flashed the doctor. "That's my business, sir!"

Jagger looked upon my father's angry face and smiled.

"Is we right, doctor," said Skipper Tommy, "in thinkin' you knows she
lies desperate sick?"

"Damme!" cried the doctor. "I've heard that tale before. You're a pretty
set, you are, to try to play on a man's feelings like that. But you
can't take _me_ in. No, you can't," he repeated, his loose under-lip
trembling. "You're a pretty set, you are. But you can't come it over me.
Don't you go blustering, now! You can't come your bluster on me.
Understand? You try any bluster on me, and, by heaven! I'll let every
man of your harbour die in his tracks. I'm the doctor, here, I want you
to know. And I'll not go ashore in weather like this."

My father deliberately turned to wave Skipper Tommy and me out of the
way: then laid a heavy hand on the doctor's shoulder.

"You'll not come?"

"Damned if I will!"

"By God!" roared my father. "I'll take you!"

At once, the doctor sought to evade my father's grasp, but could not,
and, being unwise, struck him on the breast. My father felled him. The
man lay in a flabby heap under the table, roaring lustily that he was
being murdered; but so little sympathy did his plight extract, that, on
the contrary, every man within happy reach, save Jagger and Skipper
Tommy, gave him a hearty kick, taki