Coming down from aloft, where he had gone immediately after dinner to reef and furl the topgallant sails as best he could, Emily met Paul with the news that the derelict seemed to be recovering a glimmer of consciousness.  
"When I carried a cup of beef extract to him just now he was awake," she told Paul. "He seemed not at all surprised to find a woman attending him. He thinks he is in a hospital somewhere—that I am a nurse. When I asked him his name he answered: 'Number 19—cot 19, nurse.'"
 
"Did you ask him anything about the Daphne?"
 
"Yes; but neither the vessel's name nor Captain McGavock's nor any of those you told me were in the log book meant anything to him. His only answer to all my questions was, 'Nurse, if the captain comes in before "lights out" tell him I'd like to see him.' He's an Irishman, I should say—a kind sort of an old soul, with a rare, musical brogue."
 
"A very broth of a bhoy, eh?" laughed Paul.
 
"If he is one of the Daphne's crew, I am sure—I am certain that he had nothing to do with the mutiny."
 
"And that is the woman of it. Come. I'll go in to see him. Let me get a lantern out of the engine room."
 
"There is a lamp in his room. I filled it the way I saw you filling the sidelights."
 
"You'd make a great pioneer, Emily. Come."
 
Thus praise always came from him quickly for the doing of a helpful thing. She could imagine men working their fingers to the bone under his mastership.
 
Together they went aft, Emily preceding Paul through the alleyway to the derelict's door. The light in the lamp, which hung in gimbals against the forward bulkhead of the room, was low. Emily went in and turned it up.
 
"Are you feeling better?" she asked cheerily.
 
"Yes, nurse, easier—much easier," came his answer rather thickly. His face was toward the inside of the berth. He turned over painfully, his eyelids fluttering. "Has the cap—the Ould Man——"
 
His lips froze as he discovered Paul Lavelle in the doorway. He started up on his right elbow. His eyes bulged wildly. His jaw went loose. He made a vain effort to lift his left hand to his brow in a salute. He tried to speak, but his tongue clicked in his throat like a twig crackling. With a weird, eery cry he fell back in the berth senseless.
 
The time of a breath embraced the strange scene.
 
"Oh, Paul, Paul, he knows you!" exclaimed Emily in a tense whisper.
 
"I never saw him to my knowledge until we pulled him aboard this afternoon," said Paul, recovering from his surprise. "He has mistaken me for somebody else. Poor devil is out of his head."
 
"Are you sure you have never seen him?"
 
"I'm quite sure. But it's uncanny. Please bring the lamp over here so that I can take a good look at him."
 
Emily carried the light to the side of the berth and Paul bent over the stranger. He searched every feature of the weather-beaten face and his own memory at the same time. He was positive he had never seen the derelict before.
 
"Just out of his head, little woman—that's all. I never saw him—I don't know him, although his own mother wouldn't recognize him now."
 
As he spoke Paul timed the unconscious man's pulse and laid an ear to his breast. Emily caught an uncertain shake in Paul's head as he straightened.
 
"Is—is he going to get better?" she whispered.
 
Paul answered her with a shrug of doubt.
 
"We can't do any more for him than we are doing now."
 
He added this as he saw her wince and the glint of pitying tears come into her eyes.
 
"His heart is very weak," he went on, after a slight pause. "He seems to be in a bad mooring ground. He's burnt up as if he had been through a fiery furnace. It may sound strange to hear one speak of the sea as a fiery furnace, but it is. It can burn a man's soul out of him just as it can freeze it out. And—mock him with bitter waters he cannot drink."
 
There was a world of bitterness in his tone as he finished speaking and left the room to go aft to the medicine chest. He returned with some spirits of nitre to find Emily placing a wet pack across the derelict's forehead. He mixed a dose of the tincture in a tumbler of water and dropped some of the fluid between the cracked lips.
 
"This will help to pull the fever down," he explained. "It's all I could find back there—this nitre. He will need watching and attention to-night. If this calm holds I will slip in here now and again."
 
A low moan escaped from the stranger.
 
"Come, little woman. Let us leave him now."
 
Paul put up a hand to turn down the light.
 
"No, I am going to stay and do what I can for him, Paul."
 
"But, Emily, this—this is no work for you. You——"
 
"Paul Lavelle, it is my work," the gold woman said firmly. "I've been a loafer—an idling nothing—a leaner all my life. I've never helped until now. You've taught me how. You can't unteach me. If my hands can aid this poor old man to keep a hold upon life they are going to do it. If they can make his going out any easier they are going to do it. My God, the thought—that it might be you—and a woman would turn away from—from you——"
 
Her voice broke. Tears choked her. She put an arm against the bulkhead and buried her face in it, away from Paul's sight. Her nobility of soul chastened his spirit. It exalted him. In silence he went out into the night. Strangely there lingered in his brain as he went about the ship two sentences Emily had uttered with unwonted fire: "You've taught me how. You can't unteach me."
 
There was much for the Daphne's new skipper to do. While the calm gave no sign of breaking and the lounge barometer held steady for fair weather, still the longer he contemplated the task of handling the Daphne the bigger it grew in his sight. He could not afford to let any precaution which suggested itself pass unembraced. So he turned to work on the theory that it is easier to let out a reef in a breeze than it is to furl a sail in a gale. He cut his coat according to the cloth he had. He double-reefed the foresail and the topsails and, with the donkey engine's aid, found it not such a hard task as he had imagined it might be. Steam hauled the blocks of the reef tackles closer together than sailor hands could ever have brought them. The best he could do with the mainsail was stopper it with gaske............