“Tell me,” he cried. “But it can’t be so bad as that. It would be too dreadful for him to die.”
“He is very bad,” said the doctor slowly, “but I have not given up all hope. It is like this, Meadows. The poison is passing through his system, and in my ignorance of what that poison really is, I am so helpless in my attempts to neutralise it. Even if I knew it would be desperate work.”
“Then you can do nothing?” cried Jack in agony.
“I can do little more, my lad, but help him in his struggle against it. The battle is going on between a strong healthy man and the insidious enemy sapping his life. Nature is the great physician here.”
Jack uttered a piteous groan, and still knelt by the couch, holding the poor fellow’s hand, watching every painful breath he drew, and noting the strange change in his countenance, and the peculiar spasms which convulsed him from time to time, but without his being conscious of the pain.
As Jack knelt there it seemed to him that it was in a kind of confused dream that he heard his father’s questions and the doctor’s replies, as, after some ministration or another, they walked to the end of the cabin.
Then the captain came down softly.
“The enemy’s coming out to sea,” he said, “and making north; they’ll be in a fix if the wind rises, for they are clustering in their canoes like bees. How’s the patient?”
“Bad,” said Sir John.
“Tut—tut—tut!” ejaculated the captain. “I am sorry. But you’ll pull him through, doctor?”