The next thing she was conscious of was a dreadful smarting in her back, and on opening her eyes found that it was quite dark in the hut. So weary was she, however, that after stretching out her hand to assure herself that Dick was safe by her side, she shut her eyes again and went fast asleep. When she woke, the daylight was creeping into the damp and squalid hut, revealing the heavy form of Mr. Meeson tossing to and fro in a troubled slumber on the further side. She got up, feeling dreadfully sore about the back; and, awaking the child, took him out to the stream of water and washed him and herself as well as she could. It was very cold outside; so cold that the child cried, and the rain clouds were coming up fast, so she hurried back to the hut, and, together with Dick, made her breakfast off some biscuit and some roast penguin’s eggs, which were not at all bad eating. She was indeed, quite weak with hunger, having swallowed no food for many hours, and felt proportionately better after it.
Then she turned to examine the condition of Mr. Meeson. The will had been executed none too soon, for it was evident to her that he was in a very bad way indeed. His face was sunken and hectic with fever, his teeth were chattering, and his talk, though he was now awake, was quite incoherent. She tried to get him to take some food; but he would swallow nothing but water. Having done all that she could for him, she went out to see the sailors, and met them coming down from the flagstaff. They had evidently been, though not to any great extent, at the rum cask again, for Bill looked sheepish and shaky, while the ill-favored Johnnie was more sulky than ever. She gazed at them reproachfully, and then asked them to collect some more penguin’s eggs, which Johnnie refused point-blank to do, saying that he wasn’t going to collect eggs for landlubbers to eat; she might collect eggs for herself. Bill, however, started on the errand, and in about an hour’s time returned, just as the rain set in in good earnest, bearing six or seven dozen fresh eggs tied up in his coat.
Augusta, with the child by her, sat in the miserable hut attending to Mr. Meeson; while outside the pitiless rain poured down in a steady unceasing sheet of water that came through the wretched roof in streams. She did her best to keep the dying man dry, but it proved to be almost an impossibility; for even when she succeeded in preventing the wet from falling on him from above, it got underneath him from the reeking floor, while the heavy damp of the air gathered on his garments till they were quite sodden.
As the hours went on his consciousness came back to him, and with it his terror for the end and his remorse for his past life, for alas! the millions he had amassed could not avail him now.
“I am going to die!” he groaned. “I am going to die, and I’ve been a bad man: I’ve been the head of a publishing company all my life!”
Augusta gently pointed out to him that publishing was a very respectable business when fairly and properly carried on, and not one that ought to weigh heavy upon a man at the last like the record of a career of successful usury or burgling.
He shook his heavy head. “Yes, yes,” he groaned; “but Meeson’s is a company and you are talking of private firms. They are straight, most of them; far too straight, I used always to say. But you don’t know Meeson’s—you don’t know the customs of the trade at Meeson’s.”
Augusta reflected that she knew a good deal more about Meeson’s than she liked.
“Listen,” he said, with desperate energy, sitting up upon the sail, “and I will tell you—I must tell you.”
Asterisks, so dear to the heart of the lady novelist, will best represent the confession that followed; words are not equal to the task.