Salt for the Wound

Tom shoved the oilcloth packet inside his shirt, against his skin, and got his shoulder beneath Marrow's armpit. The captain was a heavy man even hollowed by blood-loss, and the splinter shifted with every jolt — a wet sound that Tom tried not to hear. Marrow groaned once, low in his throat, and then bore it in silence as men of his trade had been taught to bear things.

"Easy, sir. Easy. The shore's just there."

He dragged him back through the palmettos and into the dunes, and laid him in the lee of a half-buried log where the wind would not find him. The blood was still coming, slower now, which Tom did not think was a good sign.

He had no bandages. He tore a strip from the tail of his own ruined coat. He thought of the splinter and his hand shook on the saber's hilt — pull it, and Marrow might bleed out in a minute. Leave it, and the wound would rot. He left it. He packed the cloth tight around the wood instead, the way he had once seen Old Iberra do for a man gored by a swivel-gun. Then he scooped seawater in his cupped palms and washed the worst of the crust from Marrow's face.

The captain's eyes opened a slit. "Stupid," he breathed. "Should have left me."

"Yes, sir."

A faint, dry crack of laughter. Marrow's hand closed weakly on Tom's wrist.

"Listen, then. The packet — there's a name in it. A man on Saint-Pierre. He'll know what to do. But before that — "

His eyes rolled past Tom's shoulder. Down the beach, where the smoke rose, two figures had appeared on the sand. They were walking this way.