“Have you another?”
“No, zur; ’tis me first.”
“And does he talk?” the doctor asked.
She looked up—in a glow of pride. And she flushed gloriously while she turned her eyes once more upon the gasping, ill-featured babe upon her breast.
“He said ‘mama’—once!” she answered.
In the fog—far, far away, in the distances beyond Skull Island, which were hidden—the doctor found at that moment some strange interest.
“Once?” he asked, his face still turned away.
“Ay, zur,” she solemnly declared. “I calls my God t’ witness! I’m not makin’ believe, zur,” she went on, with rising excitement. “They says t’ Bowsprit Head that I dreamed it, zur, but I knows I didn’t. ’Twas at the dawn. He lay here, zur—here, zur—on me breast. I was wide awake, zur—waitin’ for the day. Oh, he said it, zur,” she cried, crushing the child to her bosom. “I heared un say it! ‘Mama!’ says he.”
“When I have cured him,” said the doctor, gently, “he will say more than that.”
“What say?” she gasped.