CHAPTER XXV.
THE STORM.
For several days after the fishing adventure, Flora was confined to her berth with severe indisposition, and was, indeed, so alarmingly ill, that at one time she thought that she would be consigned to the deep, as food for the fishes, on the great banks of Newfoundland. She loathed the bad water and food, and became so much reduced by sickness, that poor little Josey had to be weaned.
It was a great blessing that the young, tender creature, suffered little from the privation. She ate her meals of biscuit softened in the putrid water, with an appetite that health and hunger alone can give, and looked as rosy and as happy upon the coarse diet prepared by the kind and attentive Sam Fraser, as if it had been compounded of the finest white bread and new milk.
"Oh, what a blessing it is, my darling, that you continue so well!" said Flora, on the fourth morning after her baby's natural sustenance had been withdrawn. "I thought this illness would have been the death of you."
"Dinna distress yersel about the wean," said Mrs. Muckleroy; "the gude God takes care o' His ain. The wee cherub is as blithe as a lark. The pure, fresh air, is baith meat an' drink to her."
Fortunately for Flora, the Captain had a consignment of old port on board, a couple of tablespoonfuls of which, mixed with a little oatmeal, twice a day, was all the nourishment she was able to take; but, in all probability, it was the means of saving her life, and preventing her from sinking from utter exhaustion.
When once more able to leave her bed and crawl upon deck, she looked the mere shadow of her former self. The women, with whom she was a great favourite, crowded round her to shake her by the hand, and offer their congratulations on her recovery. Their simple and affectionate expressions of regard and sympathy moved her very much.
"What depths of kindness there is in the human heart!" she thought. "How little do we understand and appreciate the minds of uneducated people, whom we are too apt to look down upon as inferiors. How far they surpass the hackneyed children of the world in their generous devotion to those they love. Unfettered by conventional selfishness, they dare to obey the natural instincts of their humanity—to act and think with simplicity and truth. We mistrust them, because we are unacquainted with their mode of life, and the motives which influence their general conduct. They look up to us, and have boundless faith in the superiority of our position and intelligence. When will a higher Christianity than that which at present rules the world break down the wall which pride and bigotry have raised between children descended from one parent stock, and bridge the gulf of poverty and ignorance that now separates them from each other?"
"The time is coming," cries the philanthropic speculator; but adds, with a sigh, "it will not be in our day. Yet it will surely come."
Three weeks the ship had been becalmed upon the banks, the dull monotony of the dreary fog only relieved by the ringing of a large bell and the blowing of horns, which were kept up at regular intervals during the day and night, in order to prevent the ship being run down by some larger vessel.