Seeing Poole standing by his father’s head, facing him, he waited motionless for a few moments.
“Hah! That’s better!” sighed the skipper. “Get me the quinine-bottle out of the chest, my boy. This fever has made me as weak as a rat.”
Poole moved to one of the lockers at once, leaving the way clear for his father to see the young midshipman where he stood; and the boy set his teeth as the skipper’s fierce fiery eyes seemed to look him through and through.
“Now for it,” thought Fitz, as he held his breath. “What will he say?”
He was not long kept in doubt, for the skipper spoke at once, not with some furious denunciation, not with mocking contempt of the childish effort of which the lad had been the hero, but in a quiet, easy-going tone, strangely contrasted with the fierce look in his eyes.
“Oh, there you are, my lad,” he said. “Do you see what work these tropic fevers can make of a strong man? Why, if you had only had me to deal with you would have had it all your own way. There, come and sit down, and let’s have a palaver.”
“I can stand, sir, thank you,” said the boy coldly, “and you needn’t exert yourself to talk. I know all that you would say, and I confess at once that I have failed. But,” he added excitedly, “I am not sorry, not a bit. I felt it my was duty under the circumstances, and I feel now that I might have succeeded, and that it would have been right.”
“Of course you do,” said the skipper quietly. “But there, come and sit down here, all the same. That’s right. We can talk more easily now. One moment; just open that window a little wider. This place is like an oven, and I want cool air.—Hah! That’s better.”
He lay with his head thrown back and his eyelids half-closed.
“Well,” he said at last, good-humouredly, and with a smile beginning to play about his rugged face, with the effect of sending a thrill of anger through the boy’s frame, as he flashed out furiously—