The instant Captain Bagley was satisfied that Alec was going to be ill, he telephoned Captain Rumford. Bivalve, which was nothing but a shipping port with practically no residences, possessed no physician. Captain Rumford said he would bring his family doctor down with him; and before many hours passed the physician stood by Alec's bedside.
"You'll have to take mighty good care of this lad if he is to escape having pneumonia," said the physician, after testing Alec's pulse and temperature. "It's a wonder the shock didn't kill him outright."
"If his condition is so serious as that," said the shipper, "he ought to be in a good home where he can have proper care."
"He should. If you were willing to take a deck-hand into your house, Captain, you would be doing an act of real charity."
"Not charity," said the phlegmatic shipper slowly. "Justice. We owe a lot to that lad."
That was all Alec ever heard Captain Rumford say by way of explanation or apology. He was a man who often found it difficult to express himself in words; but he had other ways of expressing himself, as Alec was soon to learn. Even the little he had said was much for him to utter. But little as it was, Alec had heard the statement, and it made him feel a great deal better than any of the doctor's medicines did.
For though he was speedily whisked away to the shipper's home, where he had the best of care, his illness was severe. Chills and high fever seized him alternately. So severe had been the shock of the two exposures that his system could not seem to rally and throw off the heavy cold that had seized upon him. Ten days passed before Alec was pronounced fit by the doctor to take his place on the deck of the Bertha B.
Irksome enough those ten days seemed to Alec; yet they were probably as profitable a ten-day period as he ever spent in his life. For not a day passed that Captain Rumford did not spend considerable time in the sick-room. In those ten days Captain Rumford came to know Alec better than he would ordinarily have known him in a year.
"Alec," he said one day, "did you know that the man who fell overboard was Hawley—that is, did you know it before you went over after him?"
"Yes, sir," said Alec.