Yon returned, in force, to try to capture the ship. He nearly succeeded, but the crew of the hospital ship fought him off, weak as they were. Yon had not counted on their being ill, evidently, or he would never have gone near them. It was lucky for him they were, or his whole force would have been wiped out.
Yon and his men managed to gain entrance into the ship, and the fighting raged for twenty minutes or so before he and the sailors with him were driven off.
The physicians aboard the Caduceus were not in the unfortunate position that the men on the Morris had been. They were able to use the medical supplies they had aboard, and came through with less than ten per cent dead, in spite of the Plague.
But the battle between the crew and Yon's men had done irreparable damage to the ship. It could neither leave nor communicate with the outside. The crew of the Caduceus was stranded.
They could hold off any attacks; they had plenty of power. But they couldn't, they didn't dare, leave the island. If the Plague struck again—and they had no way of knowing whether it would or not—they would not have enough medicine to be effective.
Stalemate.
And thus it remained for twelve long years, until the day that Leland Hale came plodding along the beach toward the little village of Taun.
CHAPTER III
Hale did not feel well at all. He kept putting one foot in front of the other, pushing himself through the blue sand, but he would much rather have crawled into the shade and gone to sleep. His brow was feverish, and his arms and legs and neck felt stiff. It had been two days since he had been caught in the rain, and his sniffles and sneezes had developed into congested lungs and a stopped-up nose. He felt like hell.