“Ah! Then you’re an exception, my lad.”
“How is Mr Russell, sir?”
“Getting on, but obstinate; wants to be well all at once, and get to his duties. I must go and see him now. Mind and take your stuff regularly. Morning.”
The cabin was empty once more, save for the patient, who uttered a sigh of relief, and lay listening to the soft pad, pad of the sailors’ bare feet on the deck, and the voices of the officers giving their orders, all sounding pleasantly familiar as he lay back there feeling that he must be better from the interest he took in all that was going on, and the pleasant clearness of his head.
“I wonder how long it will be before they have me on deck,” he said to himself.
Chapter Eleven.
“Soup” And “Taters.”
“Hooray!” cried Bob Howlett, about a week later, as he burst into the cabin.