“Yep, but if it had been fifty feet further I guess I’d never have come out of the water alive. My arm feels as if it was paralyzed. I can’t raise it now.”
“Huh, I don’t wonder. Come on up to camp and get it fixed up,” said Jack solicitously. But just at this point Mr. Warner and Big O’Brien joined them. Ray’s shirt was still open and both men saw the ugly cut.
“By George, lad, that’s a bad slash you have there. What have you been doing for it?” said the marine engineer as he bent closer to examine the laceration.
“Taking a salt water bath,” said the lad with a plucky smile.
“Yes? Well, if you get it infected, you’ll not smile about it. Come up to the lighthouse and we’ll see if Eli Whittaker has anything in his government medicine chest that will help you. A good application of iodine is the thing to chase away the poison germs and heal it up. Come along, son.”
And together they climbed the steep path to the camp. Here they were greeted by a group of workmen who were eager to hear Ray’s story, but Mr. Warner refused to allow the boy to satisfy their curiosity until they had reached the lighthouse and done some doctoring.
Old Eli Whittaker, the keeper of Hood Island light for ten years past, was just getting downstairs from his bedroom on the top floor of the little dwelling attached to the lighthouse, when Mr. Warner and his party arrived. The old keeper had been able to get four hours’ sleep since five o’clock that morning, when he put the light out, and he figured that he had quite enough to last him until the following morning.
“’Lo, Mister Warner. T’men told me you was coming. I calc-late ye came ashore this morning,” said Eli, shaking hands with the engineer.
“Yes, Captain Whittaker,” said Mr. Warner. “We came up on the Blueflower. Say, Captain, how’s the ‘doctor’? We have a patient here. We wanted to see if you had anything in your medicine chest to take the pain out of a nasty flesh wound. Some iodine perhaps.”
“Wall, I calc-late ye can have ’bout a pint o’ it. Hope ye ain’t goin’ t’ need moren that ’cause that all’s left in t’ bottle. My two Manx cats ‘Port’ and ‘Sta’berd’ got fightin’ t’ other night an’ I used a heap o’ iodine t’ mend up their plegid hides,” said the lighthouse keeper, a smile playing about the corners of his mouth.