Japanese, with
sail-needles and twine, sewing up a canvas-swathed bundle that
unmistakably contained a human body.

"O'Sullivan used a razor," said Mr. Mellaire.

"And that is Andy Fay?" I cried.

"No, sir, not Andy. That's a Dutchman. Christian Jespersen was his name
on the articles. He got in O'Sullivan's way when O'Sullivan went after
the boots. That's what saved Andy. Andy was more active. Jespersen
couldn't get out of his own way, much less out of O'Sullivan's. There's
Andy sitting over there."

I followed Mr. Mellaire's gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little
Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe. One arm was in a
sling and his head was bandaged. Beside him squatted Mulligan Jacobs.
They were a pair. Both were blue-eyed, and both were malevolent-eyed.
And they were equally emaciated. It was easy to see that they had
discovered early in the voyage their kinship of bitterness. Andy Fay, I
knew, was sixty-three years old, although he looked a hundred; and
Mulligan Jacobs, who was only about fifty, made up for the difference by
the furnace-heat of hatred that burned in his face and eyes. I wondered
if he sat beside the injured bitter one in some sense of sympathy, or if
he were there in order to gloat.

Around the corner of the house strolled Shorty, flinging up to me his
inevitable clown-grin. One hand was swathed in bandages.

"Must have kept Mr. Pike busy," was my comment to Mr. Mellaire.

"He was sewing up cripples about all his watch from four till eight."

"What?" I asked. "Are there any more?"

"One more, sir, a sheeny. I didn't know his name before, but Mr. Pike
got it--Isaac B. Chantz. I never saw in all my life at sea as many
sheenies as are on board the _Elsinore_ right now. Sheenies don't take
to the sea as a rule. We've certainly got more than our share of them.
Chantz isn't badly hurt, but you ought to hear him whimper."

"Where's O'Sullivan?" I inquired.

"In the 'midship-house with Davis, and without a mark. Mr. Pike got into
the rumpus and put him to sleep with one on the jaw. And now he's lashed
down and talking in a trance. He's thrown the fear of God into Davis.
Davis is sitting up in his bunk with a marlin-spike, threatening to brain
O'Sullivan if he starts to break loose, and complaining that it's no way
to run a hospital. He'd have padded cells, straitjackets, night and day
nurses, and violent wards, I suppose--and a convalescents' home in a