“I fear, sir,” said the messenger, shaking his head sadly, “that he cannot live till morning.”
“And I have been lying here,” I exclaimed, reproachfully, “while the poor boy is dying,” and I sprang at once from my hammock, hurried on my clothes, saying, “lead me to him at once.”
“He is delirious, but in the intervals of lunacy he asks for you, sir,” and as the man spoke we stood by bedside of the dying boy.
The sufferer did not lie in his usual hammock, for it was hung in the very midst of the crew, and the close air around it was really stifling; but he had been carried to a place, nearly under the open hatchway, and laid there in a little open space of about four feet square. From the sound of the ripples I judged the schooner was in motion, while the clear calm blue sky, seen through the opening overhead and dotted with myriads of stars, betokened that the fog had broken away. How calmly it smiled down on the wan face of the dying boy. Occasionally a light current of wind—oh! how deliciously cool in that pent-up hold—eddied down the hatchway, and lifted the dark chesnut locks of the sufferer, as, with his little head reposing in the lap of an old veteran, he lay in an unquiet slumber. His shirt-collar was unbuttoned, and his childish bosom, as white as that of a girl, was open and exposed. He breathed quick and heavily. The wound of which he was dying, had been intensely painful, but within the last half hour had somewhat lulled, though even now his thin fingers tightly grasped the bed-clothes as if he suffered the greatest agony. Another battle-stained and gray-haired seaman stood beside him, holding a dull lantern in his hand, and gazing sorrowfully down upon the sufferer. The surgeon knelt beside him, with his finger on the boy’s pulse. As I approached they all looked up. The veteran who held him shook his head, and would have spoken, but the tears gathered too chokingly in his eyes. The surgeon said,—
“He is going fast,—poor little fellow—do you see this?” and as he spoke he lifted up a rich gold locket, which had lain upon the boy’s breast. “He has seen better days.”
I could not answer, for my heart was full. Here was the being to whom, but a few hours before I had owed my life—a poor, slight, unprotected child—lying before me, with death already written on his brow,—and yet I had never known of his danger, and never even sought him out after the conflict. How bitterly my heart reproached me in that hour. They noticed my agitation, and his old friend—the seaman that held his head—said sadly,
“Poor little Dick—you’ll never see the shore again you have wished for so long. But there’ll be more than one—thank God!—when your log’s out, to mourn over you.”
Suddenly the little fellow opened his eyes, and gazed vacantly around.
“Has he come yet?” he asked in a low voice. “Why won’t he come?”
“I am here,” said I, taking the little fellow’s hand, “don’t you know me, Dick?”