“Oh, I see; you are disappointed because I have given you no medicine. Why, Steve, you are as bad as the poor people who come to a dispensary. They are not happy unless they have a box of pills and a bottle of medicine. I’ll mix you up something.”
“No, no! don’t, sir, please,” cried Steve. “I am very much better now; I am, indeed.”
“Very well, then; lie down there for an hour or two, till the sickness produced by the shock has gone off.”
“Oh no, sir. I needn’t do that, need I?”
“Well, then, come on deck.”
Steve rose from the locker, winced, and subsided again.
“I think I will lie for a little while.”
The doctor nodded and left him in the cabin, where he lay back for about ten minutes listening to the thumping about on deck, where the men were evidently busy making more preparations for the adventurous cruise. His shoulder ached, and there was a peculiar strained feeling about the muscles of his chest; but this did not trouble him so much as the strained sensation in his mind. For, as he lay back there, he began to think about what they were saying respecting him on deck. The doctor would have told Captain Marsham how he was, Mr Lowe would hear it, and then it would go to the men from the engineer and the four Norwegians downward.
“And they’ll think I’ve no more pluck than a girl,” he thought at last; “just when I want to show that I am ready to take my part in anything. Why, if I’m ready to be upset like this, I shall be left on board when they are going on expeditions fishing, shooting, or hunting, and— Oh! this won’t do.”
And to prove that it would not do he jumped up, walked up and down the cabin twice,—a very short journey, by the way,—found that it did not hurt him more than lying still on the locker, and then went on deck.