by Maryk Lewis
Selkirk’s shoulders to the deck, at the other end three more tailed onto the rope. Slowly, to surprised grunts from the straining men, the leg stretched. It was harder than they expected.
The exposed bone disappeared inside the wound. Raw brandy flooded up an out, to trickle down the sides of the leg, as the muscles were squeezed together by the pressure.
“Hold it!” Doctor Reade called, while he held the leg straight between his hands. His knuckles were white with tension. “Now gently let it come back together...Now hold it there! That’s it...That’s right...That’s got the two ends of the bone meeting straight on.”
Quickly Matron Greeley pulled the bandages tight and knotted them, one after another, all the way down the leg.
“Ease the rope,” the doctor ordered quietly. “Gently... Gently...That’s it, men. That will do it.”
As the sailors took the rope away, the doctor and the matron added more bandages tightly over the ones already in place. Only then did Sarah have time to notice that Jess was waiting quietly behind the doctor, her eyes as big as saucers.
“Is Mr MacGillivray ready?” the doctor asked Jess.
“Yes sir. When you are,” Jess replied in a shaky voice. At a nod from the doctor, she bolted away through the crowd of seamen.
In moments the cook was there with a smoking black pot in his hand. There was a smell of tar. He held the pot where the doctor could see into it, and dipped one of his own fingers into it to show that it was hot, but not too hot.
“That’s good,” Doctor Reade nodded. “Let us have a nice dollop right over the wound.
Angus tipped the pot, and allowed a stream of hot tar to puddle over the gash in David Selkirk’s leg. Brandy spluttered and steamed, adding its strong odour to that of the tar. Round and round went the black spill, enlarging the puddle, sealing off the open wound so that nothing new could get in there to infect it.
With a good covering of tar in place, that part of David’s leg was also bandaged over, giving him a mummified leg from groin to heel.
Once the leg had been dealt with, it was time to attend to the broken ribs. Without needing to be told, the ship’s carpenter had prepared a flat board to slip under David’s back. There were holes drilled to come level with the tops of David’s shoulders, and others which came level with his armpits. Bandages wrapped tightly around his chest were threaded back through the holes to strap his shoulders to the board. There would be no movement allowed until the broken ribs had healed.
“How long should that take?” Sarah asked.
“About three weeks for the ribs, so long as he’s careful for a while afterwards,” she was told. “We’ll be on the way home from New Zealand before I let him stand on that leg again though.”
A pipe cot from the hospital flat was brought out, and the canvas was slid under the young seaman as he lay. With the pipes threaded in again, the cot made a good stretcher to shift him into the hospital flat, where he was lowered on to a second cot which already had a filled palliasse on it.
“There you are,” Doctor Reade said with a grin at Sarah. “Provided there are no complications, he’s all yours for the rest of the voyage.”
“Mine?” Sarah gaped.
“He’ll recover better for you, than he will for any of the rest of us. You’ll manage,” the doctor assured her. “I’ll be keeping an eye on matters, and won’t let him come to any harm if it can be helped.”
In the meantime Andy had brought an iron fitting down from the masthead, and was showing it to the captain and Mr Milburn. Kevin Mabon, Honora’s gigantic husband, asked to be allowed to see it.
“I’m a blacksmith by trade, sir,” he explained. “Perhaps I can be of help.”
“You might at that,” the captain agreed. “We’ve some spare ones of these on board, but if this one broke so soon after sailing, maybe the others will too.”
“Aye,” the first officer agreed, “and just think how many more of these things are holding our masts together.”
Kevin took the fitting and turned it this way and that in his hamlike fists, examining the break in the metal. “See there,” he said, “tis only case hardened, strengthened at the surface, but all soft metal in the middle. It needs to be forged again, and annealed properly. I could do it for you if I could get at my forge.”
“It’s stowed in the forehold with the ballast cargo, under the single men’s quarters,” the mate offered. “A couple of hour’s work, and we could get it up. There’s coke and all in that section.”
“It’s that, or run for Gibraltar,” Captain Hedley nodded. “We can’t face the southern seas with our masts in doubt. If this weather holds, we could set up the forge on the foredeck. Perhaps bed it down in pig iron to save our decks.”
“I’ll have men standing by with buckets to catch any sparks,” the mate said.
“I could strike for you,” Andy volunteered. “I served three years of an apprenticeship.”
So it was arranged. The off-duty watch was called to assist, and soon men were burrowing into the cargo under the single men’s quarters. Several bunks had to be dismantled, and the hatches taken off to allow the forge to be swung out on a temporary boom. Some of the pig iron went to make a fireproof layer under the forge on the foredeck, and more of it was carted aft to be restowed on the floor of the single women’s quarters in order to restore the balance of the ship now that it had so much weight high up in the bows.
“If the wind rises or changes, all that will have to go below in a hurry,” Captain Hedley warned.
“We’ll have the fire out, and the whole lot down the hatch in five minutes,” Mr Milburn promised.
“I’ve seen a ship on its beam ends in two,” Captain Hedley returned sourly. “We’ll have two men watching the sky from the main trees right through, mister.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the mate returned promptly.
About two hours later Jess went on deck to see Andy swinging a sledge hammer. He stood easily braced against the roll of the ship, and struck cleanly and accurately time after time to Kevin Mabon’s instructions as he positioned the glowing metal on the anvil. It seemed little effort to him at all, and he was hardly sweating. She remembered what he had told her about his life before he had run away to sea, and thought how much he must have grown and developed since.
When she passed that way again, they had swapped places, Kevin on the hammer, and Andy holding the hot metal in the tongs. The two of them worked comfortably together, clearly knowing what they were doing, and acting in harmony. Every now and then the metal was dipped into a bucket of seawater, which spat and steamed. Then it went back into the furnace to be heated up again, while a second white-hot piece came out. The carpenter presided over that part of the operation, working the bellows, and making sure that no sparks escaped to mar his clean decks.
At the other end of the ship, in the hospital flat, Sarah had been sitting all that time over her unconscious patient, waiting for him to come round. Jess had brought her a mug of tea, and looked doubtfully at his wan face and closed eyes. There had not been a flicker from him. Jess was still there when Doctor Reade and Matron Greeley arrived for their first check on him.
“Is he all right?” Sarah asked anxiously.
“It’s just a matter of time,” the doctor answered comfortingly.
“He’s going to feel dreadful when he comes to,” Sarah said.
“He’s going to feel a lot worse when he discovers he can’t use his hands, and you’re going to have to do everything for him.”
“Oh lord,” Sarah gasped, and went beet red. “Can’t one of the sailors come and attend to him?”
“What sort of wife and mother are you going to be, if a task like this is beyond you?” Matron Greeley demanded severely. “You can leave it to me if you must, though I’ve got enough to do with the ones who can’t get out of their bunks yet. It’s better that than one of his messmates attending to him.”
“No, no. I’ll do it,” Sarah said, but her colour had gone from red to white.
“I’ll help you,” Jess offered.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Sarah snapped. “Whatever next? It’s my job. I’ll manage.”
Eighteen
In the event the job proved not as bad or embarrassing as she had thought. David was so obviously helpless, that after the first time, she found she could do what needed to be done without a qualm.
He recovered consciousness in the hospital flat about four hours after the accident. By then it had been decided that he would come to no harm, if Sarah went back to helping with the school for a while.
Naturally David’s first question concerned where he was, and how he got there. Honora Mabon had been keeping an eye on him at the same time as she had been attending to little Matilda Earnshaw. She sent Bridget Earnshaw for the doctor, and he collected Sarah from the great cabin on the way.
“You’ll be feeling sick and sorry for yourself I imagine,” Doctor Reade said to him.
“Och, I’m no so bad,” David replied in the accent of the Glasgow slums. “Ye should see the other feller.”
The doctor smiled at the idea that he could have got so badly damaged in a fight, and told him what his injuries actually were, and how long he expected him to be bedridden.
“And that’s only the things we know about so far,” he concluded. “I still have to find if you’ve torn anything inside, and I’ll only find that when I see what comes out of you.”
“Oot o’ me?”
“Aye, in the bed pan. Miss