Won from the Waves

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“We must keep a careful watch over him, for he has a good deal of fever, and in these warm latitudes it is somewhat a serious matter.”

Harry had expressed a wish to have Jacob Halliburt to attend on him, and as it was necessary that some one should be constantly at his side, Jacob was appointed to that duty.

It would have been impossible to have found a more tender nurse, and no one could have attended more carefully to the directions given by the surgeon.

The fever the surgeon dreaded, however, came on, and for several days Harry was delirious. Often the name of “May” was on his lips, and Jacob, as he listened, discovered that his lieutenant loved her.

Several days went by, and Harry appeared to get worse. On his return to consciousness he felt how completely his strength had deserted him, and though the doctor tried to keep up his spirits by telling him that he would get better in time, so great was his weakness that he felt himself to be dying. He was anxious not to alarm his friend Headland; but as Jacob stood by his bedside, he told him what he believed would be the case.

“And I hope, my good fellow, that you will be able to return to your home, and if you do, I wish you to bear a message to your father and mother, and to your sister. I know that she no longer lives with them, and has become fit to occupy a different station in life; but you, I doubt not, love her notwithstanding as much as ever. Tell your parents how much I esteem them, and say to your sister that my love is unchangeable, that my dying thoughts were of her, my last prayers for her welfare. I have done what I could to secure it, and have left her all the property I possess. Mr Shallard, the lawyer at Morbury, will enable her to obtain possession of it.”

“Miss May my sister!” exclaimed Jacob in a tone which aroused Harry’s attention. “I will tell her what you say, sir, if my eyes are ever blessed by seeing her again, but she is not father and mother’s child. Father found her on board a wreck when she was a little child, and though she is now a grown young lady, she does not mind still calling them as she did when she lived with us, and that’s made you fancy she is their daughter.”

This answer of Jacob’s had a wonderful effect on Harry. He asked question after question, entirely forgetting the weakness of which he had been complaining. Jacob gave him a full account of the way May had been preserved, how she had been brought up by his parents, and how the Miss Pembertons had invited her to come and live with them.

At length the doctor coming into the cabin put an end to the conversation.

From that moment Harry began to recover. It seemed to him at once that the great difficulty which he had dreaded was removed, and, ready as he had been to marry May although she was a fisherman’s daughter, he was not the less gratified to hear that she was in all probability of gentle birth although her parents were unknown. How he had not learned this before surprised him. He could only, as was really the case, fancy that the Miss Pembertons and May herself supposed him to be aware of the truth, and had therefore not alluded to it. He thought over all his conversations with May; he recollected that they had generally spoken of the future rather than of the past, by which alone he could account for her silence on the subject.