I knew that nothing better could occur to my patient than that Justine Caron should help to nurse him. This would do far more for him than medicine—the tender care of a woman—than many pharmacopoeias.
Hungerford had insisted on relieving me for a couple of hours at midnight. He said it would be a good preparation for going on the bridge at three o’clock in the morning. About half-past two he came to my cabin and waked me, saying: “He is worse—delirious; you had better come.”
He was indeed delirious. Hungerford laid his hand on my shoulder. “Marmion,” he said, “that woman is in it. Like the devil, she is ubiquitous. Mr. Roscoe’s past is mixed up with hers somehow. I don’t suppose men talk absolute history in delirium, but there is no reason, I fancy, why they shouldn’t paraphrase. I should reduce the number of nurses to a minimum if I were you.”
A determined fierceness possessed me at the moment. I said to him: “She shall nurse him, Hungerford—she, and Justine Caron, and myself.”
“Plus Dick Hungerford,” he added. “I don’t know quite how you intend to work this thing, but you have the case in your hands, and what you’ve told me about the French girl shows that she is to be trusted. But as for myself, Marmion M.D., I’m sick—sick—sick of this woman, and all her words and works. I believe that she has brought bad luck to this ship; and it’s my last voyage on it; and—and I begin to think you’re a damned good fellow—excuse the insolence of it; and—good-night.”
For the rest of the night I listened to Galt Roscoe’s wild words. He tossed from side to side, and murmured brokenly. Taken separately, and as they were spoken, his words might not be very significant, but pieced together, arranged, and interpreted through even scant knowledge of circumstances, they were sufficient to give me a key to difficulties which, afterwards, were to cause much distress. I arrange some of the sentences here to show how startling were the fancies—or remembrances—that vexed him.
“But I was coming back—I was coming back—I tell you I should have stayed with her for ever.... See how she trembles!—Now her breath is gone—There is no pulse—Her heart is still—My God, her heart is still!—Hush! cover her face.... Row hard, you devils!—A hundred dollars if you make the point in time.... Whereaway?—Whereaway?—Steady now!—Let them have it across the bows!—Low! low!—fire low!... She is dead—she is dead!”
These things he would say over and over again breathlessly, then he would rest a while, and the trouble would begin again. “It was not I that did it—no, it was not I. She did it herself!—She plunged it in, deep, deep, deep! You made me a devil!... Hush! I WILL tell!—I know you—yet—Mercy—Mercy—Falchion—”
Yes, it was best that few should enter his cabin. The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings, no more than the words of a well man are always reckoned sane. At last I got him into a sound sleep, and by that time I was thoroughly tired out. I called my own steward, and asked him to watch for a couple of hours while I rested. I threw myself down and slept soundly for an hour beyond that time, the steward having hesitated to wake me.
By that time we had passed into the fresher air of the Mediterranean, and the sea was delightfully smooth. Galt Roscoe still slept, though his temperature was high.