Happily, from this night Greaves lost his senses, sank into a lethargy, and lay motionless as death for hours; then awoke, but never to consciousness, though often he would call out from amid the darkness that lay upon him, with so much reason in his exclamations as made me imagine his mind was returned. Whatever he said that had sense was nautical. Once he put the brig about in his wanderings. He startled me, who had entered his cabin but a minute or two before, by a sharp, hard cry of:
“Ready about!”
He followed on with the proper orders, pausing with all the judgment you can imagine for the intervals, and, when he supposed he had got the brig on the other tack, the bowlines triced out, and the gear coiled away, he whispered awhile briskly:
“Now she stumps it,” said he. “Clap the jigger on that main-tack, my lads! Get a small pull of the weather main royal brace. Flatten in that jib sheet there. Damme, Mr. Walker, we don’t want balloons on our jib booms.”
So would he wander, and all that he said in this way was sensible.
When he lost his mind the lady Aurora offered to nurse him. He did not recognize her; and, down to the hour of his death, she was in and out of his cabin, dressing little delicate messes of fowl and tortoise and the like in the caboose, feeding him, damping the sweat from his face, ministering to him in many ways. He would have died quickly but for her. Jimmy had no knowledge of feeding or preparing food for him. Not a soul of the rough junks forward were fit for such work; and the business of the brig kept my hands full.
The day before Greaves died, I entered his cabin, and found the lady on her knees beside his bunk. She looked slowly round on my entering, crossed herself, rose, and, putting her hand upon my arm, whispered in English:
“Shall he not die Catolique?”
I answered with one of those shrugs which I had got from her.
“He is Catolique,” said she.