“I’ve got fifty thousand toothaches in my skull, Stanton; what the deuce is it, eh?” he cried, tossing from side to side on his pillow. Then suddenly he raised himself:
“Stanton!”
“Yes, sir!”
“You think I’m going to be ill. Don’t deny it; I see it in your face. Perhaps I am; I feel uncommonly odd here”—passing his hand over his forehead—“but I want to say one thing while I think of it: you don’t write a word to any one in England until the doctor says I’m a dead man. Do you hear me speaking to you?”
“Yes, sir; but don’t you think if the admiral…”
“If you attempt to write to him, I’ll dismiss you that very instant!” And his eyes flashed angrily. “You mind what I say, Stanton!”
“All right, sir; you know best what you like about it.”
The excitement seemed to have exhausted his remaining strength; he grew rapidly worse; and when the doctor came, he declared his patient was in for a brain fever that might turn to worse unless the circumstances were specially propitious.
Why should we linger by his bedside? It would be only a repetition of the old story; delirium following on days of pain and restlessness; a long period of anxiety while youth battled with the enemy, now seemingly about to be worsted in the fight, then rising above the disease with unexpected starts, showing how rich and strong the resources of the young frame were. The medical man was not communicative with the valet; he kept his alternations of hope and fear to himself; it was only by scrutinizing the expression of his face as he felt the patient’s pulse that Stanton could make a guess at his opinion. To his eager inquiries on accompanying the oracle to the door, he received the uniform reply that this was a case in which the disease must run its course, when no one could say what a day might bring forth, when much depended on the quality of the patient’s constitution; the one drop of comfort Stanton extracted from him was the emphatic assurance that in this instance the patient had a constitution of gold. The crisis came, and then Stanton, convinced in his inexperienced mind that no mortal constitution could pass this strait, boldly asked the doctor if it was not time to write to the family.
“These things must run their course; in twenty-four hours it will be decided,” was the sententious reply.