But these, as well as the other restorative measures usually adopted on such occasions, utterly failed. The spirit seemed to have fled forever from the bruised and beaten body.
“It can’t be,” said Major Gordon, kneeling in an agony by the prostrate form. “But for me, too, he had not died. Charley! Charley! look up!”
Whether the mortal anguish with which these words were spoken had power to stop the spirit when about to wing its flight, or whether nature was already resuscitating, the eyes opened faintly, at this crisis, with a shudder, closed, opened again, and then steadily regarded the kneeling officer, while a faint smile stole over his face.
“He’s coming to,” said Mullen, in a voice tremulous with joyful emotion. “You know us, Charley, don’t you? There’s no fear, Major; he’ll do well enough now.”
In five minutes, indeed, he was able to sit up on the sand, though still too weak to speak, except a word or two at a time.
“He’s worth a dozen dead men,” said Mullen, gayly, at this, the spirits of the party recovering with a rebound.
“It most fotched you that time,” said a negro, who was among the volunteers, as he paused from rubbing. “I thought you a gone coon, Charley, when I saw you rolled over and over, like a kitten that’s got a dab from its mammy’s paw. But you dodged the devil; them that’s born to be hanged can’t be drowned. Ha! ha!” and as the recovered mariner made a weak, playful attempt to strike him, the dapper little fellow fell over in the sand, in convulsions of laughter at what he thought his wit.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RESCUE
I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs —Shakespeare.
With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart. —Scott.