From Heriot's hands he received some warm milk, mixed with brandy—milk from the stores of soldered tin—and this luxury he swallowed with ease; but yet seemed as one in a dream, and in broken accents, he muttered of pain, and in a dreary and bewildered way, of his "poor dear girls, whom he should never see again."
Then he fell into a sound sleep, with Ethel's soft white arm under his head, and she listened to his heavy respirations, more with fear than any other emotion, lest each long-drawn breath might prove the last.
But Heriot, who patted her kindly and caressingly on the head, sought to smile those fears away, by telling her that "all danger was past now," and so the second day of restoration gradually stole away.
Another night of complete repose "sent Mr. Basset a long way on the voyage of recovery," as Captain Phillips said, when peeping into the little cabin, where the pale, affectionate, and unwearied watcher, though her eyes were bloodshot, and had dark rings under them, yet hung over her charge, and now Rose came to take her place.
"How is dear papa this morning?" she asked, anxiously.
"All well, Rose, darling, if the old boy will only keep up his pluck," was the doctor's unpoetical reply, as he slyly kissed the pretty inquirer, and led away Ethel, who he insisted should take a little repose, with the announcement that she "was quite killing herself; and he would not stand it, as he was accountable to the captain for the health of all on board—and then Morley must not see how ill she was looking."
As for poor Morley, she could see but little of him just then, for he, with Bartelot, Morrison, Gawthrop, and Foster, were never off the deck, where by his skill and activity he won golden opinions from the captain, whose anxieties (when the distance he had yet to run, the size of his crippled ship when compared with the slender crew, the prospect of water running short, and having to keep a look-out for those three proas, are all considered) were certainly not small.
To Rose Basset, our medical friend Leslie Heriot, a good, kind-hearted, sensible, and practical Scotsman, had been at first but a source of lively little flirtation and fun—a dangler, an admirer, and nothing more. At home she always had a dozen such; it was Rose's habit and way; but now, as his earnestness, and the troubles and dangers they shared together, created a deeper emotion in her breast, he gradually became the dream, the beau-ideal of a warm-hearted young girl's passionate and often senseless first love; and to the conclusion of her portion of the voyage—when she, Ethel, and papa would land at Port Louis, and when Leslie must sail on to Singapore, a vast distance, of which she had very little conception, save that it was far, far away up the Indian seas—to that period, we say, she looked forward with dismay and alarm.
Long and perilous though the voyage had been, it was not yet long enough for Rose, who was desperately in love with the young Scotch doctor.
And now that Leslie, by his skill, care, and tenderness, had saved her father from death, had restored him to life and to his daughters, he became an idol, whom she felt that she and Ethel should worship with all their hearts; and Ethel's quiet, earnest, and great gratitude to her sister's lover was only equalled by the sincere regard and esteem she had for him.