“Poor soul!” thought honest Blunt, “how she feels for the child! D—— that lubberly surgeon, he's hurt her!—Never mind, my lass,” he said aloud. It was broad daylight, and he had not as much courage in love-making as at night. “Don't be afraid. I've been in ships with fever before now.”
Awaking, as it were, at the sound of his voice, she came closer to him. “But ship fever! I have heard of it! Men have died like rotten sheep in crowded vessels like this.”
“Tush! Not they. Don't be frightened; Miss Sylvia won't die, nor you neither.” He took her hand. “It may knock off a few dozen prisoners or so. They are pretty close packed down there—”
She drew her hand away; and then, remembering herself, gave it him again.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing—a pain. I did not sleep last night.”
“There, there; you are upset, I dare say. Go and lie down.”
She was staring away past him over the sea, as if in thought. So intently did she look that he involuntarily turned his head, and the action recalled her to herself. She brought her fine straight brows together for a moment, and then raised them with the action of a thinker who has decided on his course of conduct.
“I have a toothache,” said she, putting her hand to her face.
“Take some laudanum,” says Blunt, with dim recollections of his mother's treatment of such ailments. “Old Pine'll give you some.”