(continued)

3

The Black Spot

About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks and medicines.  He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.

"Jim," he said, "you're the only one here that's worth anything, and you know I've been always good to you.  Never a month but I've given you a silver fourpenny for yourself.  And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low, and deserted by all;  and Jim, you'll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey?"

"The doctor—" I began.

But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice but heartily.  "Doctors is all swabs," he said;  "and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men?  I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes—what to the doctor know of lands like that?—and I lived on rum, I tell you.  It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me;  and if I'm not to have my rum now I'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore, my blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab";  and he ran on again for a while with curses.  "Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges," he continued in the pleading tone.  "I can't keep 'em still, not I.  I haven't had a drop this blessed day.  That doctor's a fool, I tell you.  If I don't have a drain o' rum, Jim, I'll have the horrors;  I seen some on 'em already.  I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you;  as plain as print, I seen him;  and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived rough, and I'll raise Cain.  Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't hurt me.  I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim."

He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for my father, who was very low that day and needed quiet;  besides, I was reassured by the doctor's words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer of a bribe.

"I want none of your money," said I, "but what you owe my father.  I'll get you one glass, and no more."

When I brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out.

"Aye, aye," said he, "that's some better, sure enough.  And now, matey, did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?"

"A week at least," said I.

12