CHAPTER II
WHEREIN THE CAPTAIN KEEPS TO HIS OWN QUARTERS
Doctor Christobal brought some additional details to the dinner-table.
He was not the ship's doctor. The _Kansas_, built for freight rather
than passengers, did not carry a surgeon on her roll; Dr. Christobal's
presence was due to Mr. Baring's solicitude in his daughter's behalf.
It chanced that the courtly and gray-haired Spanish physician had
relinquished his practise in Chile, and was about to pay a
long-promised visit to a married daughter in Barcelona. Friendship,
not unaided by a good fee, induced him to travel by the _Kansas_.
He had been called on to attend Mr. Boyle and the wounded Chilean, and
he reported now that the chief officer's injury was trifling, but the
Chilean's wound might incapacitate him during the remainder of the
voyage.
"So far as I can gather," he said, "Mr. Boyle had a narrow escape.
These half-breeds have a nice anatomical knowledge of the situation of
the lung; they also know the easiest way to reach it with a sharp
instrument. Captain Courtenay fired as the knife fell, otherwise our
first mate would have attended his own funeral this evening.
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