Chapter Five.
“I’m so thirsty! Please, I’m so thirsty; and it is so hot!”
Twice over Doctor Kingsmead heard that appeal, but he could not move to respond to it, for Nature would have her way. He had sat watching his patient’s berth till he could watch no longer, since there are limits to everyone’s endurance, and that morning he had suddenly become insensible to everything, dropping into a deep sleep that there was no fighting against.
He had slept all that day solidly, if the term may be used, quite unconscious of everything; but towards evening he began either to hear things or to dream and hear external sounds.
Feeling too reasserted itself. He was scorched by the heat, and there was a pleasant lapping, washing sound of water making its way into his ears for some time before someone said the above words.
He smiled at last in an amused way as he lay in a half-conscious state, for it seemed to him that it was he that declared how thirsty he was and how hot, and he felt how breathless it was.
So calm and still too, and so pleasant to lie back there in spite of heat and thirst, listening to that lapping, washing sound softened by distance into a whisper.
Then the words were repeated, and he lay perfectly still with his eyes close shut, thinking in a dreamy way that it would be wise to drink a glass of water and open a window to let in the air, for it must be a hot morning down in his old Devonshire home with the sun shining through upon his bed.
Then all at once he opened his eyes and lay looking down at something upon the floor—something lying in the full glow of the ruddy sunshine which came through the round plate glass of the port-hole, and he was still so much asleep that he was puzzled to make out what it meant.
By degrees he grasped faintly that it was a man fast asleep, and making a gurgling noise as he breathed, but he could not make out why that man should be asleep on the floor of his bed-room in Devonshire, down there at Dawlish where the blue sea washed against the red rocks.