As I looked over the gunwale, I saw a huge strong fellow rush down the slope, and breasting the waves as they beat, approach the boat. Lizzy sprang into his arms at once, and he carried her back to land triumphantly. I suppose at any other moment a pang of jealousy might have shot through me. Much sea-sickness, like perfect love, overcometh all things. I felt no more, as I gazed, than if it had been a bundle he had been clasping to his bosom.
They lifted me up, and laid me on the shingle.
“Oh, do, Tom; he is such a good creature!” said a voice which, low as it was, I heard distinctly.
“By all that's droll! this is the Cockney I met at Mor-risson's!” cried a loud voice. I looked up; and there, bending over me, was Counsellor MacNamara, the bland stranger I had fallen in with at Dublin.
“Are you able to get on your legs,” asked he, “or shall we have you carried?”
“No,” said I, faintly; “I 'd rather lie here.”
“Oh, we can't leave him here, Tom; it's too cruel.”
“I tell you, Lizzy,” said he, impatiently, “there's not a minute to lose.”
“Let them carry him, then,” said she, pleadingly.
I mildly protested my wish to live and die where I lay; but they carried me up somewhere, and they put me to bed, and they gave me hot drinks, and I fell into, not a sleep, but a trance, that lasted twenty-odd hours.