“Saints alive!  But I thought you told me—­”

“So I did:  two solid golden sufferins.  And that,” said Mrs Bowldler, “was for some time the most astonishin’ part of the business.  Two solid golden sufferins:  and low!—­as the sayin’ is—­low and behold, eighteen pence in small silver!”

“Little enough too, for a miracle!” mused Fancy.

“It encouraged ’em to go on.  Captain Hocken—­he’s a humane gentleman, too, and never graspin’—­no, never in his life!—­but I suppose he’d begun to get interested,—­Captain Hocken ups and suggests as they were wastin’ time, mixin’ table-salt and water when there was the wide ocean itself overside, to be had for the dippin’.  So they tried sea-water.”

“My poor Pammy.’”

“Don’t you start a-pityin’ me,” gasped a voice, faint but defiant, from the bed.  “If I die, I die.  But I got the account to balance.”

“I disremember what sum—­er—­resulted that time,” confessed Mrs Bowldler; “my memory not bein’ what it was.”

“Ninepence; an’ two threepennies with the soap—­total two-and-nine, which was correct.  If I die, I die,” moaned Palmerston.

“’Ero!” murmured Fancy, stepping to the bedside and arranging his pillow.

“You take my advice and lie quiet,” counselled Mrs Bowldler.  “You’re not a-goin’ to die this time.  But there’s been a shock to the system, you may make up your mind,” she went on, turning to Fancy.  “I’d most forgotten about the soap.  That was Philp’s suggestion, as I heard.  They found a cake of Monkey Brand in the ship’s fo’c’sle, and by the time Doctor Higgs arrived with his stomach-pump—­”

“They’d sent for him? What, for two pounds?”

“Less two-an’-nine, by this—­as they thought.  But, of course, there was the child’s health to be considered . . .  I ought to mention that before Dr Higgs came Captain Hunken remembered how he’d treated a seaman once, that had swallowed carbolic by mistake.  He recommended tar:  but there wasn’t any tar to be found—­which seems strange, aboard a ship.”

“It was lucky, anyhow.”

“There was a plenty of hard pitch about, and one or two reckoned the marine glue in the deck-seams might be a passable substitute.  They were diggin’ some out with their penknives when Doctor Higgs arrived with his pump.”

“And did he use it?”

“He did not.  He asked what First Aid they had been applyin’, an’ when they told him, his language was not to be repeated.  ‘D’ye think,’ said he, ’as I’d finish the child for—­’well, he named the balance, whatever ’twas.”

“One-seventeen-three,” said the voice from the bed.

“That’s so.  And ‘Monkey Brand?’ says he.  ’Why, you’ve scoured his little stummick so, you might put it on the chimbly-piece and see your face in it!  Fit an’ wrap what’s left of him in a blanket,’ says Doctor Higgs; ‘an’ take him home an’ put him to bed,’ says he—­which they done so,” concluded Mrs Bowldler, “an’ if you’ll believe it, when I come to put him to bed an’ fold his trowsers across the chair, out trickles the two sufferins!”