“Yes.” (It was Father Rayburn who answered.) “My brother—or perhaps I should say my brother-in-law, as that is really our relationship,—is lying very ill at Killykinick. While still prostrated with fever, he was exposed to the storm of yesterday, in which he nearly lost his life. Between the shock, the excitement of his rescue by the life-savers, he is very, very ill,—too ill to be removed to a hospital; and he is at Killykinick with only boys and men to care for him,” continued Father Rayburn. “The doctors tell me an experienced nurse is necessary, and we can find none willing to take so serious a case in such a rude, remote place. But my good friend Father John seems to think that you would take pity on our great need.”
“Oh, I will,—I will!” was the eager answer. “I already have friends at Killykinick among those fine boys from St. Andrew’s. My little goddaughter and I were to make an excursion there to-day, but the storm disabled Mr. Forester’s yacht. I am so glad to be of service to you, Father! I will get ready at once.”
In spite of the joyful return of laddie yesterday, there was gloom this morning at Killykinick. Daddy, who had been brought over at his own request from the Life-Saving Station, lay in the old Captain’s room, which Brother Bart had resigned to him, very, very sick indeed.
“Sinking fast, I’m afraid,” the doctor said. “The fever has broken, but the shock of yesterday’s danger and rescue has been too much for a man in his weakened state. Still there’s a chance for him—a fighting chance. But it will take very careful and experienced nursing to pull him through.”
So Father Tom had gone in search of a nurse, leaving Freddy and Brother Bart watching by the sick bed; while Dan, who as second mate was assisting his chief officers to right and repair the “Sary Ann,” listened with a heavy heart to the old salt’s prognostications.
“He won’t last the day out,” declared Captain Jeb. “Blue about the gills already! But, Lord, what could you expect, doused and drenched and shaken up like he was yesterday? It will be hard on the little chap, who was so glad to get his father back. It’s sort of a pity, ’cording to my notion, that, being adrift so long, he didn’t go down in deep-sea soundings, and not come ashore to break up like this.”
“O Captain Jeb, no, no!” Dan looked up from his hammering on the “Sary Ann” in quick protest against such false doctrine. “A man isn’t like a ship: he has a soul. And that’s the main thing, after all. If you save your soul, it doesn’t make much difference about your body. And drifting ashore right here has saved the soul of Mr. Wirt (or Mr. Neville, as we must call him now); for he was lying over on Last Island, feeling that there was no hope for him in heaven or on earth. And then Freddy came to him, and Father Tom, and he turned to God for pardon and mercy; and now his dying is all right,—though I haven’t given him up yet,” concluded Dan, more cheerfully. “Poor little Freddy has been praying so hard all night, I feel he is going to be heard somehow. And I’ve seen Mick Mulligan, that had typhoid last summer, looking a great deal worse than Mr. Neville, and before Thanksgiving there wasn’t a boy on the hill he couldn’t throw. Here comes Father Tom back with—with—” Dan dropped his hammer entirely, and stood up to stare in amazement at the little motor boat making its way to the broken wharf. “Jing! Jerusalem! if—if it isn’t that pretty lady from Beach Cliff that Polly calls Marraine!”
XXIV.—A Star in the Darkness.
Marraine,—Polly’s Marraine,—Aunt Winnie’s old friend,—the lovely, silver-robed lady of the party who had stood by Dan in his trouble!—it was she, indeed, all dressed in white, with a pretty little cap on her soft, wavy hair, and her hands full of flowers. Miss Stella always made a first appearance at a patient’s bedside with flowers. She said they were a friendly introduction that never failed.