“Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?”
“I can lie down in my berth.”
“You would kill yourself.”
“What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure.
Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see
yourself that I cannot do otherwise.”
The chief surgeon took in Henrietta’s last letter almost at a single
glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it,
but in reality meditating.
“I am sure,” the excellent man thought in his heart, “I am sure, in this
man’s place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any
use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong-Nai alive.
Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he
is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure,
when I tell him that his master’s life depends upon his obedience.”
Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel’s was by a flat
refusal, he said,--
“Very well, then; be it as you choose!”
Only he came in again the same evening, and, with an air of
disappointment, said to Daniel,--
“To go is all very well; but there is one difficulty in the way, of
which neither you nor I have thought.”
“And what is that?”
“There is no vessel going home.”
“Really, doctor?”
“Ah! my dear friend,” replied the excellent man boldly, “do you think I
could deceive you?”
Evidently Daniel thought him quite capable of doing so; but he took
good care not to show his suspicions, reserving to himself the right of
making direct inquiries as soon as the opportunity should offer. It came
the very next morning. Two friends of his called to see him. He sent
Lefloch out of the room on some pretext, and then begged them to go down
to the port, and to engage a passage for him,--no, not for him, but for
his man, whom urgent business recalled to France.
In the most eager manner the two gentlemen disappeared. They stayed away
three hours; and, when they came back, their answer was the same as the
doctor’s. They declared they had made inquiries on all sides; but they
were quite sure that there was not a single vessel in Saigon ready to
sail for home. Ten other persons whom Daniel asked to do the same
thing brought him the same answer. And yet, that very week, two ships
sailed,--one for Havre, the other for Bordeaux. But the concierge of
the hospital, and Lefloch, were so well drilled, that no visitor reached
Daniel before having learned his lesson thoroughly.
Thus they succeeded in keeping Daniel quiet for a fortnight; but, at the
end of that time, he declared that he felt quite well enough to look out
for a ship himself; and that, if he could do no better, he meant to
sail for Singapore, where he would be sure to procure a passage home. It
would, of course, have been simple folly to try and keep a man back who
was so much bent upon his purpose; and, as his first visit to the port
would have revealed to him the true state of things, the old surgeon
preferred to make a clean breast of it. When he learned that he had
missed two ships, Daniel was at first naturally very much incensed.
“That was not right, doctor, to treat me thus,” he exclaimed. “It was
wrong; for you know what sacred duties call me home.”
But the surgeon was prepared for his justification. He replied with a
certain solemnity which he rarely assumed,--
“I have only obeyed my conscience. If I had let you set sail in the
condition in which you were, I should have virtually sent you to your
grave, and thus have deprived your betrothed, Miss Ville-Handry, of her
last and only chance of salvation.”