He cried out at that.The doctor! Never! That would be a death sentence.
The effort had exhausted him.He closed his eyes, but went on rambling in a low voice.I had hated him from the start.The late captain had hated him, too.Had wished him dead.Had wished all hands dead....
"What do you want to stand in with that wicked corpse for, sir? He'll have you, too," he ended, blinking his glazed eyes vacantly.
"Mr.Burns," I cried, very much discomposed, "what on earth are you talking about?"He seemed to come to himself, though he was too weak to start.
"I don't know," he said languidly."But don't ask that doctor, sir.You are I are sailors.Don't ask him, sir.Some day perhaps you will have a wife and child yourself."And again he pleaded for the promise that Iwould not leave him behind.I had the firmness of mind not to give it to him.Afterward this stern-ness seemed criminal; for my mind was made up.
That prostrated man, with hardly strength enough to breathe and ravaged by a passion of fear, was irresistible.And, besides, he had happened to hit on the right words.He and I were sailors.That was a claim, for I had no other family.As to the wife and child (some day) argument, it had no force.
It sounded merely bizarre.
I could imagine no claim that would be stronger and more absorbing than the claim of that ship, of these men snared in the river by silly commercial complications, as if in some poisonous trap.
However, I had nearly fought my way out.Out to sea.The sea--which was pure, safe, and friendly.Three days more.
That thought sustained and carried me on my way back to the ship.In the saloon the doctor's voice greeted me, and his large form followed his voice, issuing out of the starboard spare cabin where the ship's medicine chest was kept securely lashed in the bed-place.
Finding that I was not on board he had gone in there, he said, to inspect the supply of drugs, bandages, and so on.Everything was completed and in order.
I thanked him; I had just been thinking of asking him to do that very thing, as in a couple of days, as he knew, we were going to sea, where all our troubles of every sort would be over at last.
He listened gravely and made no answer.But when I opened to him my mind as to Mr.Burns he sat down by my side, and, laying his hand on my knee amicably, begged me to think what it was Iwas exposing myself to.
The man was just strong enough to bear being moved and no more.But he couldn't stand a re-turn of the fever.I had before me a passage of sixty days perhaps, beginning with intricate navi-gation and ending probably with a lot of bad weather.Could I run the risk of having to go through it single-handed, with no chief officer and with a second quite a youth?...
He might have added that it was my first com-mand, too.He did probably think of that fact, for he checked himself.It was very present to my mind.
He advised me earnestly to cable to Singapore for a chief officer, even if I had to delay my sailing for a week.
"Never," I said.The very thought gave me the shivers.The hands seemed fairly fit, all of them, and this was the time to get them away.Once at sea I was not afraid of facing anything.The sea was now the only remedy for all my troubles.
The doctor's glasses were directed at me like two lamps searching the genuineness of my resolution.
He opened his lips as if to argue further, but shut them again without saying anything.I had a vision so vivid of poor Burns in his exhaustion, helplessness, and anguish, that it moved me more than the reality I had come away from only an hour before.It was purged from the drawbacks of his personality, and I could not resist it.
"Look here," I said."Unless you tell me officially that the man must not be moved I'll make arrangements to have him brought on board to-morrow, and shall take the ship out of the river next morning, even if I have to anchor outside the bar for a couple of days to get her ready for sea.""Oh! I'll make all the arrangements myself,"said the doctor at once."I spoke as I did only as a friend--as a well-wisher, and that sort of thing."He rose in his dignified simplicity and gave me a warm handshake, rather solemnly, I thought.But he was as good as his word.When Mr.Burns ap-peared at the gangway carried on a stretcher, the doctor himself walked by its side.The programme had been altered in so far that this transportation had been left to the last moment, on the very morn-ing of our departure.
