"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 Davis—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 arms sore? Injections. You've been insensible for nearly thirty hours."
I thought slowly. I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of dogs. "May I have solid food?" I asked.
"Thanks to me," he said. "Even now the mutton is boiling."
"Yes," I said, with assurance; "I could eat some mutton."
"But," said he, with a momentary hesitation, "you know I'm dying to hear how you came to be alone in the boat." I thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.
"Damn that howling!"
8
