“I must go!”
The good doctor frowned, and replied rudely,—
“Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?”
“I can lie down in my berth.”
“You would kill yourself.”
“What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure. Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see yourself that I cannot do otherwise.”
The chief surgeon took in Henrietta’s last letter almost at a single glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it, but in reality meditating.
“I am sure,” the excellent man thought in his heart, “I am sure, in this man’s place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong-Nai alive. Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure, when I tell him that his master’s life depends upon his obedience.”
Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel’s was by a flat refusal, he said,—
“Very well, then; be it as you choose!”