like a dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business
of the boat came back to me.

"Have some of this," said he, and gave me a dose of some
scarlet stuff, iced.

It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.

"You were in luck," said he, "to get picked up by a ship with a
medical man aboard." He spoke with a slobbering articulation,
with the ghost of a lisp.

"What ship is this?" I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.

"It's a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never asked
where she came from in the beginning,--out of the land
of born fools, I guess. I'm a passenger myself, from Arica.
The silly ass who owns her,--he's captain too, named Davies,--he's
lost his certificate, or something. You know the kind of man,--calls
the thing the 'Ipecacuanha,' of all silly, infernal names;
though when there's much of a sea without any wind, she certainly
acts according."

(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl
and the voice of a human being together. Then another voice,
telling some "Heaven-forsaken idiot" to desist.)

"You were nearly dead," said my interlocutor. "It was a very
near thing, indeed. But I've put some stuff into you now.
Notice your arm's sore? Injections. You've been insensible for nearly