"Well, doctor," said Wardlaw, anxiously, "what is your report?"
"Not so good as I could wish; but nothing to excite immediate alarm. Overtaxed brain, sir, weakened and unable to support this calamity. However, we have reduced the fever; the symptoms of delirium have been checked, and I think we shall escape brain fever if he is kept quiet. I could not have said as much this morning."
The doctor then took his leave, with a promise to call next morning; and, as soon as he was gone, Wardlaw turned to General Rolleston, and said, "Here is Wylie, sir. Come forward, my man, and speak to the general. He wants to know if you can point out to him on the chart the very spot where the Proserpine was lost?"
"Well, sir," said Wylie, "I think I could."
The great chart of the Pacific was then spread out upon the table, and rarely has a chart been examined as this was, with the bleeding heart as well as the straining eye.
The rough sailor became an oracle; the others hung upon his words, and followed his brown finger on the chart with fearful interest.
"Ye see, sir," said he, addressing the old merchant—for there was something on his mind that made him avoid speaking directly to General Rolleston—"when we came out of Sydney, the wind being south and by west, Hudson took the northerly course instead of running through Cook's Straits. The weather freshened from the same quarter, so that, with one thing and another, by when we were a month out, she was five hundred miles or so nor'ard of her true course. But that wasn't all; when the leak gained on us, Hudson ran the ship three hundred miles by my reckoning to the nor'east; and, I remember, the day before she foundered, he told me she was in latitude forty, and Easter Island bearing due north."
"Here is the spot, then," said General Rolleston, and placed his finger on the spot.
"Ay, sir," said Wylie, addressing the merchant; "but she ran about eighty-five miles after that, on a northerly course—no—wind on her starboard quarter—and, being deep in the water, she'd make lee way—say eighty-two miles, nor'east by east." The general took eighty-two miles off the scale, with a pair of dividers, and set out that distance on the chart. He held the instrument fixed on the point thus obtained.
Wylie eyed the point, and, after a moment's consideration, nodded his head.