To his mother he described the sufferings that this disease would work, all the details of its pains, and how little children and mothers and wives would be the chief sufferers, dying in helpless pain, or being bereft of those they loved best.
As he talked, the heart of the good woman rose up within her and blessed her son, acknowledging, in spite of her natural desires, that he was in this more truly the great man than she had fancied him in her wildest dreams of opulence and renown. She credited him with far purer motives than he knew himself to possess.
A father's rule over his own money is a very modified thing, the very fact of true fatherhood making him only a partner with his child. Caius was under the impression that his father could have refused him the necessary outfit of medical stores for this expedition, but that was not the way old Simpson looked at it.
"If he must, he must," he said to his wife angrily, gloomily, for his own opinion in the matter had changed little; but to Caius he gave his consent, and all the money he needed, and did not, except at first, express his disapproval, so that Caius took the less pains to argue the matter with him.
It was only at the last, when Caius had fairly set out on his journey, and, having said good-bye, looked back to see his father stand at the gate of his own fields, that the attitude of the stalwart form and gray head gave him his first real insight into the pain the parting had cost—into the strong, sad disapproval which in the father's mind lay behind the nominal consent. Caius saw it then, or, at least, he saw enough of it to feel a sharp pang of regret and self-reproach. He felt himself to be an unworthy son, and to have wronged the best of fathers. Whether he was doing right or wrong in proceeding upon his mission he did not know. So in this mind he set sail.
CHAPTER II.
THE ISLES OF ST. MAGDALEN.
The schooner went out into the night and sailed for the north star. The wind was strong that filled her sails; the ocean turbulent, black and cold, with the glittering white of moonlight on the upper sides of the waves. The little cabin in the forecastle was so hot and dirty that to Caius, for the first half of the night, it seemed preferable almost to perish of cold upon the deck rather than rock in a narrow bunk below. The deck was a steep inclined plane, steady, but swept constantly with waves, as an incoming tide sweeps a beach. Caius was compelled to crouch by what support he could find, and, lying thus, he was glad to cover himself up to the chin with an unused sail, peeping forth at the gale and the moonlight as a child peeps from the coverings of its cot.