The two Malay boatmen, who had been terribly puzzled at their master’s behaviour with one they took to be an escaped slave, obeyed his orders at once, looking very peculiar the while.
“Don’t you see who it is, you scoundrels?” cried the doctor, storming. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing, master,” said the elder boatman, submissively, for what so great a man as the doctor—one who could bring people back to life, as he had the reputation of having done before now—chose to do must be good and right.
“That’s better,” exclaimed the doctor, energetically. “Now some biscuits. Come, my dear, try and eat and drink. I wish to goodness my little woman were here! Come, eat; it will give you strength.”
Helen made a lame effort or two, but the food seemed to choke her.
“And I’d come out to find Solomon’s gold,” muttered the doctor. “Solomon’s Ophir; I seem instead to have found Solomon’s wives, or rather one of them. Bless my heart! bless my soul! Well, really I never did!”
He looked at Helen wonderingly, and then ran mentally over the trouble at the station as he longed to question his “new specimen,” as he called her, but felt some delicacy in speaking.
“Come, come,” he said at last, “you do not eat.”
“Oh, no, no, Doctor!” she cried, in hysterical tones. “I cannot eat: what shall I do?”
“One moment,” said the doctor; “tell me, do I apprehend rightly, that you have escaped from that scoundrel?”