As the doctor approached, the young man turned to him impatiently.
“Well,” he said, “have you come to make me strong, so that I can fight these scoundrels with you?”
“I wish I could,” was the quiet reply.
“Bah! Doctor’s talk,” said John Studwick bitterly. “You know you can do me no good. Why do you pester me?”
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he replied; “I have tried my best to help you.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But there, go. You worry me by staying, and this heat makes me so weak.”
“Yes, I will go directly,” said the doctor; but he first went to the cabin window, secured a piece of string to a cloth, and lowered it down, soaking it, and drew it up.
As he did so, a good-sized shark turned over and made a snap at the white, moving cloth, and the doctor shuddered, for it seemed to him that any attempt to escape from the ship to the shore would be in vain, for, as if in anticipation of coming carnage, the sharks were gathering round the doomed ship.
“Lay that upon his forehead, Mrs Pugh,” he said quietly; and as she turned to the locker upon which the young man lay, Mr Meldon hastily caught Bessy’s hand in his and held it.
“I shall fight for you to the last,” he said in a low whisper. “Do not think ill of me for speaking now; but, Bessy, I love you—very dearly, and—and we may never meet again. Say one kind word to me before I go.”