Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/101

 so much as to sneeze. The medical man and the apothecary waited until the half-skipper had fallen asleep, and then they prepared another gutta-percha pill for him, laid it on a small table by the head of his bed, and went away.

But the left-handed man was tumbled down on the floor of the police station, and asked: "Who are you, and whence come you, and have you a passport or any other tugament?"

But he, from illness, drinking, and the long pitching on the ship, had grown so weak that he answered not a word, but only groaned.

Then they immediately searched him, took his motley garment off of him, and seized his money and his repeater-watch, and the Inspector ordered that he be taken, gratis, to the hospital, by the first cabman who happened along.