and the molasses." "Molasses!" "Yes; the captain had old-fashioned prejudices against antiseptics.

He always used molasses for fresh wound-dressings.

I lay in my bunk many weary weeks--we had a long passage--and by the time we reached Hong Kong the thing was healed, there was no need for a shore surgeon, and I was standing my third mate's watch--we carried third mates in those days." Not for many a long day was I to realize the dire part that scar in Mr.
Mellaire's head was to play in his destiny and in the destiny of the _Elsinore_.

Had I known at the time, Captain West would have received the most unusual awakening from sleep that he ever experienced; for he would have been routed out by a very determined, partially-dressed passenger with a proposition capable of going to the extent of buying the _Elsinore_ outright with all her cargo, so that she might be sailed straight back to Baltimore.
As it was, I merely thought it a very marvellous thing that Mr.Mellaire should have lived so many years with such a hole in his head.
We talked on, and he gave me many details of that particular happening, and of other happenings at sea on the part of the lunatics that seem to infest the sea.
And yet I could not like the man.

In nothing he said, nor in the manner of saying things, could I find fault.