“It would kill the lad to bring him up, and as he is my patient, I have told him to stay below.”
“Am I to be thwarted and insulted on board my own ship?” cried the captain. “Whether he is ill or well, up he comes.”
And going down to the half-deck, he asked Esdale why he had not obeyed his orders.
Esdale, of course, had not received them, and said so, beginning at the same time to dress. Before, however, he could finish putting on his clothes the captain seized him by the arm and dragged him up. Scarcely, however, had he reached the deck when the poor fellow fainted right away. Tom, on seeing this, lifted him in his arms and carried him down again.
“I warn you, Captain Hawkins, that you will cause the death of the lad if you compel him to be on deck in this weather,” said the doctor firmly, as he turned to follow Tom and Esdale.
The captain, making no remark, walked aft, and did not again interfere.
Whether that sudden exposure to the cold had any serious effect I do not know, but Esdale after this got worse and worse. Whenever I could I went and sat by his side, when he used to talk to me of the happy land for which he was bound. He did not seem even to wish to live, and yet he was as cheerful as anyone on board. The doctor and first mate used also to come and talk to him, and he spoke to them as he did to me, and urged them to put their trust where he was putting his. I believe that his exhortations had a beneficial influence on them, as they had on me. When I said how I hoped that he would get better after we were round the Cape, he answered—
“I shall never see the Horn, Peter; I am as sure of that as I can be of anything.”
Two days after this land was sighted on the starboard bow. It proved to be Staten Island; but scarcely were we to the south of it when we encountered a furious gale blowing from the westward.
For two days; by keeping close hauled, the captain endeavoured to gain ground to the westward, resolved, as he declared, “to thrash the ship round the Cape.” On the third day, however, while I was on deck, a tremendous sea came rolling up.