He looked hard at her for a few seconds longer through half-closed eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you will do precisely that.”
She unfastened the blood-drenched shirt and eased aside the hand he was using to press the crumpled coat against the wound. A quick look told her what she needed to know. The flesh of his side was ripped and bloody, but she saw no sign of arterial bleeding. She pushed his hand and the coat back into place and got to her feet.
“The bullet passed cleanly through and I don’t believe any vital organs were struck,” she said. Working quickly, she hiked up the skirts of her traveling dress and tore several lengths of fabric off her petticoats. “But we must control the bleeding before we take you to the ship. There is no modern medical care available on the island. I’m afraid that you are stuck with me.”
Stanbridge grunted something unintelligible and closed his eyes.
She fashioned a thick bandage out of one long strip of the petticoat. Once again she eased his clenched hand and the coat away from his side. She pulled the edges of the wound together as best she could, fit the bandage over the gash and then clamped his hand on top to hold the compress in place.
“Press hard,” she ordered.
He did not open his eyes but his strong hand clenched tightly around the makeshift bandage.
Swiftly she wound two long strips of petticoat fabric around his waist and tied them securely to hold the bandage in place.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Stanbridge growled. He did not open his eyes.
“My father was a doctor, sir. I was raised in a household where medicine was the chief topic of conversation at every meal. I often assisted him in his work. In addition, I traveled the world with him for a few years while he studied medical practices in various foreign lands.”
Stanbridge managed to open his eyes partway. “This is, indeed, my lucky day.”
She glanced at the bloody shirt and coat. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it your lucky day, but I do believe that you will survive it. Under the circumstances that is no small thing. Now we must see about getting you aboard theStar.”
Her father had died a year earlier, but she still carried his medical kit with her on her own journeys abroad. The kit, however, was back in her stateroom on board the ship. Now that she had staunched the worst of the bleeding she had to figure out a way to get Stanbridge to theStar.
She rose, went to the entrance of the alley and stopped the first two people she saw, both locals on their way to the market. It was only a matter of a few minutes to get things organized. One glance at Stanbridge in the alley and the men understood what was needed.
With the assistance of two of their friends, both fishermen, they conveyed the barely conscious Stanbridge back to the ship in a makeshift litter fashioned from a fishing net. Amity tipped them quite extravagantly, but they seemed more pleased with her heartfelt gratitude than with the money.
Members of theStar’s crew got the patient into his stateroom and onto the narrow bunk. Amity requested that her medical kit be brought from her own stateroom. When it arrived she set to work cleaning the wound and closing it with several stitches. Stanbridge groaned from time to time, but for the most part he drifted in and out of consciousness.
Amity knew that she was on her own with the patient. There was no longer a doctor on board theStar. The ship’s physician, a ruddy-faced, overweight man who had been given to smoking and heavy drinking, had succumbed to a heart attack shortly after the ship departed from its last port of call. Amity had stepped into the breach as best she could, treating the various shipboard injuries and occasional bouts of fever that occurred among the crew.
There were only a handful of other passengers on theStar—British and American for the most part. TheStarwould take on a few more when it stopped at other islands along the way, but it was unlikely that Captain Harris would be able to find another doctor until they arrived in New York.
The fever set in sometime around midnight. Stanbridge’s skin was alarmingly hot to the touch. Amity soaked a cloth in the basin of cool water that the cabin attendant had brought to her and draped it across the patient’s forehead. His eyes flickered open. He looked at her with a bewildered expression.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
“Far from it,” she assured him. “You are safely on board theNorthern Star. We are on our way to New York.”
“You’re sure I’m not dead.”
“Positive.”
“You would not lie to me about a thing like that, would you?”
“No,” she said. “I would never lie to you about something that important.”
“The letter?”
“Safe in my satchel.”
He watched her intently for a long moment. Then he seemed to come to a conclusion.
“You would not lie about that, either,” he said.
