But I did not expect to see an envelope lying on top of them.A square envelope, belonging, in fact, to the ship's stationery.
It lay so that I could see it was not closed down, and on picking it up and turning it over I perceived that it was addressed to myself.It contained a half-sheet of notepaper, which I unfolded with a queer sense of dealing with the uncanny, but with-out any excitement as people meet and do ex-traordinary things in a dream.
"My dear Captain," it began, but I ran to the signature.The writer was the doctor.The date was that of the day on which, returning from my visit to Mr.Burns in the hospital, I had found the excellent doctor waiting for me in the cabin; and when he told me that he had been putting in time inspecting the medicine chest for me.How bizarre! While expecting me to come in at any moment he had been amusing himself by writing me a letter, and then as I came in had hastened to stuff it into the medicine-chest drawer.A rather incredible proceeding.I turned to the text in wonder.
In a large, hurried, but legible hand the good, sympathetic man for some reason, either of kind-ness or more likely impelled by the irresistible de-sire to express his opinion, with which he didn't want to damp my hopes before, was warning me not to put my trust in the beneficial effects of a change from land to sea."I didn't want to add to your worries by discouraging your hopes," he wrote."I am afraid that, medically speaking, the end of your troubles is not yet." In short, he ex-pected me to have to fight a probable return of tropical illness.Fortunately I had a good pro-vision of quinine.I should put my trust in that, and administer it steadily, when the ship's health would certainly improve.
I crumpled up the letter and rammed it into my pocket.Ransome carried off two big doses to the men forward.As to myself, I did not go on deck as yet.I went instead to the door of Mr.Burns'
room, and gave him that news, too.
It was impossible to say the effect it had on him.
At first I thought that he was speechless.His head lay sunk in the pillow.He moved his lips enough, however, to assure me that he was getting much stronger; a statement shockingly untrue on the face of it.
That afternoon I took my watch as a matter of course.A great over-heated stillness enveloped the ship and seemed to hold her motionless in a flaming ambience composed in two shades of blue.
Faint, hot puffs eddied nervelessly from her sails.
And yet she moved.She must have.For, as the sun was setting, we had drawn abreast of Cape Liant and dropped it behind us: an ominous re-treating shadow in the last gleams of twilight.
In the evening, under the crude glare of his lamp, Mr.Burns seemed to have come more to the surface of his bedding.It was as if a depressing hand had been lifted off him.He answered my few words by a comparatively long, connected speech.He asserted himself strongly.If he escaped being smothered by this stagnant heat, he said, he was confident that in a very few days he would be able to come up on deck and help me.
While he was speaking I trembled lest this effort of energy should leave him lifeless before my eyes.
But I cannot deny that there was something com-forting in his willingness.I made a suitable reply, but pointed out to him that the only thing that could really help us was wind--a fair wind.
He rolled his head impatiently on the pillow.
And it was not comforting in the least to hear him begin to mutter crazily about the late captain, that old man buried in latitude 8 d 20', right in our way --ambushed at the entrance of the Gulf.
"Are you still thinking of your late captain, Mr.
