“Oh, how tiresome! I say, though, why did you let me sleep so long?”
“Because Nature said you wanted rest. It was better to let you have your sleep out.”
“But it will soon clear up, will it not?”
“I’m thinking it will not,” said the doctor.
He thought right, for on and off the downpour lasted a fortnight, with storm after storm of thunder and lightning, and the occupants of the stranded vessel were kept close prisoners, only getting a short visit occasionally to the drenched deck, where Carey used his glass to watch the torrent ashore, which had grown into a tremendous fall, whose roar came like muffled thunder to his ears.
“It’s horribly disappointing,” he said, gloomily, on the fourteenth day. “I did so want to go ashore.”
“Out of evil comes good,” said the doctor, cheerily. “You have had another fortnight’s enforced rest, and it has done wonders towards the knitting up of the bone.”
“No,” said the boy, quickly, “it’s not so well. It aches more than ever to-day.”
“That’s only from the weather,” said the doctor, laughing. “I daresay you will feel aching sensations like that for months to come, whenever there’s a change in the weather.”
Carey looked at him with so pitiful a countenance that the doctor laughed now heartily.