"Take it away! Oh, take it way, or I must die—I must!"
Kitto flung his lantern far behind him: he had seen a terrified face among the branches, a burning face that told him all.
"And you have been here all day!" he cried, but chiefly to himself, in the inward glare of his enlightenment. "And I cooeying till I could cooey no more!"
"I thought it was savages," the voice in the clump faltered unconvincingly. "I—I never heard it before——"
"We have everything ready for you," continued Kitto, cheerily: "hot coffee, plenty to eat, dry clothes, and our best bed when we get you to it. Here, take this to go on with." His coat came off with the words, and was thrust through the branches until he felt she had it. "Now I'll get you the rest," he said, and was hurrying off.
"Wait! Wait!" she called to him, and even more strongly than in her last alarm. "Where's Denis—Denis Dent? He was the second officer, and he saved me, he alone. I must speak to him first ... to thank him ... while I can!"
And her voice broke for him, as his had broken for her, but with more reason than Nan Merridew could dream; for Denis was lying close at hand on the beach, with the station overseer stooping over him.
CHAPTER V
A TOUCH OF FEVER
Denis awoke between clean sheets in the widest berth and the largest cabin he had ever occupied: it was a matter of moments to realize that he was really on land, for the bed still heaved a little as the beach had done yesterday, or whenever it was he had been washed ashore. He felt as though he had been asleep a week; he could not have imagined so delightful a lassitude of limb and spirit. It was a small room without pretense of paper upon its weather-board walls, but the toilet cover on Denis's left was as snowy as the sheet under his chin, and a sunlit blind flapped soothingly behind it. Silence reigned, but it was the peculiarly drowsy hush of hot weather, only the deeper for its innumerable tiny sounds: one could have heard that it was hot. But there was so little on him, that little was so light, and so sweet a draught blew through the room, that in his own person Denis felt deliciously cool.