“I will, sir,” said Mafame, half ashamed at being detected in his office of inspector-general of my actions; but the Doctor, to whom he had been sent, having now got a leisure moment from his labour in the shambles, came up and made enquiries as to how I felt.
“Why, Doctor, I thought I was in for a fever half an hour ago, but it is quite gone off, or nearly so—there, feel my pulse.”—It was regular, and there was no particular heat of skin.
“Why, I don’t think there is much the matter with you. Mafame, tell the Captain so; but turn in and take some rest as soon as you can, and I will see you in the morning—and here,” feeling in his waistcoat pocket, “here are a couple of capers for you; take them now, will you?” (And he handed me two blue pills, which I the next moment chucked overboard, to cure some bilious dolphin of the liver complaint.) I promised to do so whenever the Lieutenant relieved the deck, which would, I made no question, be within half an hour.
“Very well, that will do—good-night. I am regularly done up myself,” quoth the Medico, as he descended to the gunroom.
At this time of night, the prizes were all in a cluster under our lee quarter, like small icebergs covered with snow, and carrying every rag they could set. The Gleam was a good way a-stern, as if to whip them in, and to take care that no stray piccaroon should make a dash at any of them. They slid noiselessly along like phantoms of the deep, every thing in the air and in the water was so still—I crossed to the lee side of the deck to look at them—The Wave, seeing some one on the hammock nettings, sheered close to, under the Firebrand’s lee quarter, and some one asked, “Do you want to speak us?” The man’s voice, reflected from the concave surface of the schooner’s mainsail, had a hollow, echoing sound, that startled me.
“I should know that voice,” said I to myself, “and the figure steering the schooner.”
The throbbing in my head and the dizzy feel, which had capsized my judgment in the cabin, again returned with increased violence—“It was no deception after all,” thought I, “no cheat of the senses—I now believe such things are.”
The same voice now called out, “Come away, Tom, come away,” no doubt to some other seaman on board the little vessel, but my heated fancy did not so construe it. The col real again overtook me, and I ejaculated, “God have mercy upon me a sinner!”
“Why don’t you come, Tom?” said the voice once more.
It was Obed’s. At this very instant of time, the Wave forged a-head into the Firebrand’s shadow, so that her sails, but a moment before white as wool in the bright moonbeams suffered a sudden eclipse, and became black as ink.