“Tired, that’s it,” agreed Halberd. “I’m a bit tired myself, this afternoon, but by cock’s crow to-morrow I could enjoy pulling the tail out of a lion and beating the beast to death with the bloody end of it.”
“Well, doesn’t your stomach ache, or your head hurt you?” insisted Adam. “When you cough like that, doesn’t it hurt your chest?”
“No, I like it, for the tickling,” said Halberd.
The two old scamps were afraid of being taken across the channel to Spain again, or down into France, or perhaps across to Morocco. After three days of his “tinkering” unsuccessfully, with his faithful companions, Adam called in a doctor.
The worthy physician promptly bled the two patients. Little Pike became quieter, if possible, than before. Halberd, on the contrary, was somewhat wrought up in his feelings.
“By my steel!” said he, when the doctor had departed, “this puny Sir Nostrum has let more of my juice with his nonsense than ever was taken by swordsman out of my carcass. Faith! I’ll pulp the fellow, and he comes again!”
Adam laughed, for Halberd suddenly got back a monstrous appetite. He likewise abounded in pains, which he permitted the Sachem to soothe; and he otherwise improved past all belief. He had been a little ill, and his sympathy with Pike had made his ailment mischievous.
Pike, however, had no such rally in him. He put in his time smoothing the coverlet with slow, feeble movements, while he lay there looking at Adam with dumb affection until one could almost fancy he was wagging a tail, with weak, joyful jerks.
He got the Sachem to sing him the love song of the many seas, for Pike had once had a heart full of love for a maiden himself, and while the experience was nothing jollier than a funeral on the day set for the wedding, nevertheless he liked the lively song, with all its various maids and misses mentioned, for he conceived them all to be the self-same girl, after all, simply transported to different climes.
While Adam was singing and playing, with the merriest spirit he could conjure, the wistful old Pike had the impudence to close his eyes and die.