Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse (17 page)

“They had good reason to kidnap Jock Cameron and Tammie, so it isn’t ridiculous at all, Dr. Mac,” Cherry declared, siding with Tess. “Mr. Cameron discovered that the crew has been smuggling something out through Rogues’ Cave. I have good reason to believe it is silver.”

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“Silver!” cried Dr. Mackenzie, starting to laugh and choking over his last swallow of coffee. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the story of the silver in Rogues’

Cave!”

“You know about the
silver
?” asked Cherry incredu-lously.

“Of course,” replied the doctor, still sputtering with suppressed laughter. “I’m surprised that someone hasn’t told you that old story before this.” Cherry’s face must have shown clearly her utter astonishment, for he hastened to correct himself, “No, I don’t suppose you would hear of it.” Tess walked over with the pot of coffee to fi ll up the doctor’s cup. She said stiffl y, “Ye were about to speak, Dr. Mac, of the men—ah, what blackguards they were!—who salted the Old Mine with silver. Weel, ’tis a common enough story in the village. But ’tis na heard in Barclay House. Neither is it one that’s told where a Barclay might hear it.”

“Then, Tess, I shall tell it to Miss Ames on the way to Carse Point,” retorted the doctor. “It does the Barclays good, as well as most everyone else, to learn to laugh at themselves once in a while.” During the exchange between Tess and Dr. Mac, Cherry quietly ate her oatmeal and drank her coffee.

Already worried about Tammie and Old Jock, she knew that Dr. Mac’s story would send her spirits even lower. She had only a vague idea of what salting a mine meant. But it was associated in her mind with nothing particularly pleasant.

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“I’m ready to go, if you are, Dr. Mac,” she said, getting up. She praised Tess’s oatmeal as being “just right.”

“Thank you, Tess, for making me eat one of your delicious breakfasts,” said the doctor. “Let’s go, Cherry.” Tess promised to leave word at the hospital or the lighthouse if she learned anything new about Tammie.

The cook had little hope, however, that telephone service at Barclay House would be restored soon.

“The lines are doon, a great tangle of wires, Ramsay, the gardener, told me when I saw him early this morning,” she reported. “So ’tis na likely ye’ll be hearing from me a-tall.”

Cherry and the doctor went outside to his Ford.

“It’s good of you to come,” Dr. Mac said, once they were on the road to Carse Point Lighthouse. “You know it’s no part of your duty to do this.”

“So long as my patient is all right and you, his doctor, say it’s all right,” Cherry told him, smiling, “I would not be much of a nurse if I did not do what I could in an emergency like this.”

Dr. Mac gave her a grateful smile in return. “You’re a real nurse, Cherry Ames,” he complimented her. “And a wonderful person.”

As they bumped along the road beside the cliffs, Cherry asked if he had forgotten that he was to tell her about the silver in Rogues’ Cave.

“Certainly not,” he answered, and began, “You’ve heard of George Barclay, Sir Ian’s brother, of course.

He’s the one who lives off the fat of the land in England.”

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Cherry told him she had.

“Well, he’s a later edition of a George Barclay who was born a number of years after the Old Mine was closed. The early George, like this later one, was a spendthrift and always in debt. Somehow or other he made the acquaintance of a slick grafter, a silver prospector, who had been fooling around in the silver mines in Mexico. This grafter persuaded Meg and Lloyd’s Great-great-uncle George Barclay to let him explore Rogues’ Cave for gold and silver, promising to make George rich quick. The grafter spent a lot of time in the cave, then came out one day, whooping and hollering that he’d found silver. Well, sir, when Great-great-uncle George went in there with the grafter, sure enough, there were all these rocks of native silver. Uncle George rewarded the man handsomely. The grafter left the island in a hurry, before Uncle George could discover that the rocks of native silver had been planted there. In fact, the fellow had brought the few rocks from Mexico for the purpose. In short, Great-great-uncle George Barclay had been played for a sucker, to put it bluntly. The grafter had salted the mine, as it is called, which was a common thing in those days. And many a seasoned miner or even an old prospector was taken in by a cleverly salted mine.” Cherry sighed deeply. “I suppose Sir Ian’s father simply found some of these rocks, too, when he was a boy,” she said to herself. The excitement that had been building up inside her ever since she and Tammie had found the leather pouch in the tower room collapsed 164
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within her like a spent balloon. She really had nothing at all to tell Meg and Lloyd now.

And there probably would be no need to tell them about the disappearance of Tammie and Old Jock, for the news would have fi ltered through to them from some of the islanders by this time.

Cherry said, “Oh, dear,” with a sigh that went to the soles of her nurse’s shoes.

“Did you say something?” asked Dr. Mackenzie.

“No, I was just thinking what a joke it is about the silver,” she answered. “It’s such an old joke, it has whis-kers on it.” She laughed without humor.

“You don’t make it sound cheerful,” observed the doctor. “Now, come on, Nurse Ames. Just think of Great-great-uncle George as a smart aleck with much money and little wit, who paid for a needed lesson from another smart aleck with plenty of wit and no money. How’s that for an early-day Mackenzie gem of an aphorism?”

Cherry laughed this time with good humor.

The island looked different after the storm. In the pale yellow of a sun obscured by clouds, everything appeared tossed and tumbled about as in a giant washing machine. The trees and bushes were bent and twisted. Buildings displayed broken windows like missing teeth, a fallen chimney, or wind-ripped cornices.

From the sea came the pounding of the waves upon the rocks and sandy beaches.

They were some distance from Carse Point when they could see the crowd that had gathered on the
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shore near the lighthouse. Presently they could make out the Canadian Coast Guard cutter standing by offshore.

Drawing nearer, Cherry and the doctor saw the fi shing boat, clothed in spray, stationary on the rocks where she had been left by the high tides of the storm.

Around the vessel the waters boiled and foamed.

The Coast Guard had fi nally gotten a line aboard the boat, from the shore to the bridge of the ship, and had rigged the breeches buoy. They had started to bring the crew ashore as Cherry and Dr. Mac drove up.

There were an ambulance, stretchers and folding cots, blankets—all in readiness. There were a chest with fi rst-aid and other medical supplies and plenty of warm water, soap, and sterile cloths.

At one side, a group of women had set up a fi eld kitchen, and were serving hot coffee, tea, and sandwiches to the lifesavers. Later, hot drinks and food would be given to the rescued.

With the exception of the men on the Coast Guard cutter, those manning the breeches buoy, and the lighthouse keeper, the lifesavers were volunteers, citizens of Balfour.

Scarcely anyone noticed Cherry and the doctor as they walked over to where the men were hauling in the fi rst of the crew aboard the wrecked boat. Every head was turned to watch the man in the breeches buoy skimming over the white-capped waves in a device that resembled a baby’s walker attached to an overhead cable.

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As soon as the fi sherman was near enough for Cherry to get a good look at him, she exclaimed, “Oh, doctor, his left leg’s broken!”

Her cry caused the crowd that had been watching silently to turn to look at her and the doctor. People called greetings to the two of them.

“Here’s Dr. Mac now,” one of the bystanders called out. “He’s got Nurse Ames with him.” By this time everyone on the island knew Cherry Ames, Sir Ian’s nurse, either by sight or from hearing about her.

The crowd made way for the doctor and Cherry to go over to where the men were gently lifting the fi sherman out of the buoy. Dr. Mackenzie signaled to two men with a stretcher, and the injured man was eased onto it.

The man’s face was distorted with pain. His trouser leg had been cut away and a crude splint had been applied to the leg.

As the doctor removed splint and bandage carefully, the man explained, “The captain fi xed me up after I broke it.”

The foot was turned outward and the ankle and leg were badly swollen. The man winced as the doctor felt it very gently.

“What’s your name?” the doctor asked.

“Jim Freeman,” replied the other. “I was sent ashore fi rst because I was hurt worse than the rest.”

“Well, I’m going to give you something to ease your pain,” Dr. Mac told him, taking out his hypodermic needle. As he gave the injection, he went on talking,
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“But that’s a bad break, Mr. Freeman, and it will have to be X-rayed. I’m going to send you to the hospital in the ambulance.”

Cherry saw where the end of the broken bone had penetrated through the skin and knew it was a compound fracture. The doctor could not determine the extent of the injury without X rays. The captain’s attempt to splint and bandage the leg, although no doubt well-intentioned, had not been benefi cial in this case. For a simple fracture where the bone was broken but not separated, a splint to hold the bone in place would have been effective.

Cherry cleansed the wound and covered it with a loose bandage. Jim Freeman was wrapped warmly and sent off to the hospital, where Nurse Cowan would take X rays and look after him until the doctor came.

The waters were gradually subsiding, although they remained too rough for the Coast Guard cutter to draw near enough to the wreck to take off the crew.

However, the men at the breeches buoy worked more quickly and one after the other of the bruised and battered men were brought ashore.

Folding cots had been set up on the beach and the men were placed on them. Those suffering from shock and exposure or slight injuries were warmly covered and given warm drinks by the women volunteers. The beach around the lighthouse soon took on the appearance of a hospital ward.

Cherry and Dr. Mac worked together, treating the serious cases. A man with a dislocated shoulder took 168
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all the doctor’s strength, with Cherry helping him, to get the end of the upper arm bone, the humerus, to snap back into its socket. Another had a severe bruise with much swelling and pain, which the doctor treated with one of the newly developed medicines for the purpose. The ship’s cook had received a third-degree burn on his arms and hands when a kettle of boiling water overturned.

Still another had an ugly cut along the side of his neck, which he had wrapped in a none-too-clean piece of cloth. He was pale from loss of blood.

To the doctor’s question if he had been in the armed forces and been immunized by an injection of tetanus toxoid against lockjaw, the man replied yes.

Cherry removed the bandage very carefully and the doctor took a look at the wound. As he was examining it, the lifesavers at the breeches buoy called out that the man they had been hauling ashore had collapsed.

“Doctor, please come quick,” they cried.

“Think you can take care of this man, with the cut?” Dr. Mackenzie asked Cherry. “Sew up the cut; give him an injection of toxoid. Since he has already been immunized against tetanus, all he needs is a booster shot.” Cherry nodded. “Yes, Doctor, I know how.” He handed her a bottle, the needle for the injection, and hurried off to the shore where the man lay immo-bile on the sand.

Cherry bent over the man with the cut, who had been placed on a cot, to get a closer look at the wound.

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“Fell on a piece of sharp metal of some kind on the boat during the storm,” he answered in response to her question of how he had received the bad cut. The edge of the metal had barely missed the jugular vein.

Others on nearby cots, who had come through relatively unscathed, took up the story of the previous night. They had been coming up from St. John’s. The storm had hit them when they were a mile or so north of the Craigmoddie Rocks at the southeast end of the island.

“I thought we were going to sink any minute,” one of them said. “The captain decided we couldn’t come round and made it through the pass and into Balfour Harbor. So we headed north, only to be driven onto the rocks at Carse Point at the other end of the island.” Cherry heard them talking, but her fi rst attention was given to her work.

She washed the long, deep cut with soap and water, then with warm water. From the little cylinder-like bottle the doctor had given her, she took sterile sur-gical thread and needle and neatly sewed the skin together. It was the fi rst time that she had ever done such a serious cut alone, but she was so familiar with the technique that her fi ngers moved confi dently.

She was just fi nishing when the doctor passed with his patient on a stretcher. He stopped, briefl y examined her work, and said, “I couldn’t have done better myself. Now, I’m going to have to leave you in charge here for a while. The man who collapsed just now was the last man aboard. Name’s Banghart. He’s the 170
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captain. He’s had a heart attack. I’ve given him an injection to ease the pain, but I must get him to the hospital and into the oxygen tent right away. Think you can look after the others? There are no serious injuries. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“I think I can manage, Dr. Mac,” Cherry replied. “I’ll do my best.”