“No, take HIM first!” she cried, when the sailors, after the custom of men, tried to help her into the gig before attempting to save us; “his life is worth more to me than my own. Take him—and for God's sake lift him gently, for he is nearly gone!”
They took him aboard and laid him down in the stern. Then, and then only, Hilda stepped into the boat, and I staggered after her. The officer in charge, a kind young Irishman, had had the foresight to bring brandy and a little beef essence. We ate and drank what we dared as they rowed us back to the steamer. Sebastian lay back, with his white eyelashes closed over the lids, and the livid hue of death upon his emaciated cheeks; but he drank a teaspoonful or two of brandy, and swallowed the beef essence with which Hilda fed him.
“Your father is the most exhausted of the party,” the officer said, in a low undertone. “Poor fellow, he is too old for such adventures. He seems to have hardly a spark of life left in him.”
Hilda shuddered with evident horror. “He is not my father—thank Heaven!” she cried, leaning over him and supporting his drooping head, in spite of her own fatigue and the cold that chilled our very bones. “But I think he will live. I mean him to live. He is my best friend now—and my bitterest enemy!”
The officer looked at her in surprise, and then touched his forehead, inquiringly, with a quick glance at me. He evidently thought cold and hunger had affected her reason. I shook my head. “It is a peculiar case,” I whispered. “What the lady says is right. Everything depends for us upon our keeping him alive till we reach England.”
They rowed us to the boat, and we were handed tenderly up the side. There, the ship's surgeon and everybody else on board did their best to restore us after our terrible experience. The ship was the Don, of the Royal Mail Steamship Company's West Indian line; and nothing could exceed the kindness with which we were treated by every soul on board, from the captain to the stewardess and the junior cabin-boy. Sebastian's great name carried weight even here. As soon as it was generally understood on board that we had brought with us the famous physiologist and pathologist, the man whose name was famous throughout Europe, we might have asked for anything that the ship contained without fear of a refusal. But, indeed, Hilda's sweet face was enough in itself to win the interest and sympathy of all who saw it.
By eleven next morning we were off Plymouth Sound; and by midday we had landed at the Mill Bay Docks, and were on our way to a comfortable hotel in the neighbourhood.
Hilda was too good a nurse to bother Sebastian at once about his implied promise. She had him put to bed, and kept him there carefully.
“What do you think of his condition?” she asked me, after the second day was over. I could see by her own grave face that she had already formed her own conclusions.
“He cannot recover,” I answered. “His constitution, shattered by the plague and by his incessant exertions, has received too severe a shock in this shipwreck. He is doomed.”