“He is not your son, then?” I said, a little surprised; for I had noticed that the child was more carefully dressed than one would expect one of the crew’s lads to be.
“Well, he is, and he isn’t. My wife and I adopted him. We lost our little one—it was a girl though—the day he was born. Yes, it is eight years ago to-day our little one was down with scarlet fever. She was nearly two. There had been an epidemic of it in the town, but I never knew how the child got it, up there miles away, unless, you know, doctor,” he said a little sadly, “I took it up to the cottage myself—I always feared so. I used, before then, to think if I had been to any infectious cases in the town, that after the couple of hours’ row across and round the point I should be safe and not take anything up to the cottage. Anyhow, the little thing had it, and badly; I hadn’t much hope in the morning. My poor little wife—she was one of your Bart’s sisters before I married her—literally fought the disease inch by inch, and we both of course did all that could be done. I had sat up half the night—Christmas Eve—with the little maid. It was one of those bad throat cases, doctor,” said the pilot, a little gruffly, turning to me.
I nodded, and he went on: “About seven, one of the men at the lighthouse came to say a pilot was signalled for by a ship off the head.”
“That was the ‘Badger’—ay. I remember you coming aboard in the cool of the morning, as well as if it was to-day,” said the captain.
“The other fellow was away,” continued the pilot; “so I had a bath and changed all my things, and left the poor wife, who was beginning to lose hope, sitting with the baby on her lap. I hardly thought it would live till I got back. Just as I rounded the headland—or was it a bit farther on, skipper—?”
“Thereabouts,” said the skipper.
“We met a boat from the town, and one of the boatmen called out to know if I was aboard, because I was wanted in Albany. His wife was taken bad.
“You know what that means, doctor!” grinned the skipper.
“I ought to, captain,” I said, hearing as he spoke a smothered murmur from our state-room, from which I guessed that the dead silence which had till then prevailed therein was only another proof of the truth of the saying, that women are curious beings.
Wholly unconscious that he had any other hearers than myself and the captain, the pilot went on: