‘WHO AM I?’
I sat looking about me, now watching the pretty wreaths of foam spring
past the sides of the boat, now gazing at the land whose features had
blended into a long, dark, compact, but hazy line, sometimes addressing
questions to Bill Hitchens, and always enjoying what to me was the
exquisitely pleasurable sensation of the boat buoyantly sweeping over
the little feathering ripples, when, my eyes going on a sudden to my
left hand, I cried out, ‘Oh, where are my rings?’
‘Your rings, lady?’ exclaimed the boatman.
‘Yes, my rings. Did you not see me take off my rings? I put them on
the sail that lay near me. Oh, where are they, where are they? I cannot
lose them. One is my wedding-ring and the other two are my husband’s
gifts. Oh, Hitchens, where are they?’ I cried, and, with a passion of
eagerness and fear, I hunted over the bottom of the boat with my eyes,
peering and straining my gaze at every crevice and hollow.
‘Now be calm, lady,’ said Hitchens, ‘it’ll come right. The rings can’t
be fur off. Let me question you. Where did you say you put ’em?’
‘That sail up there lay along the seats, and I put my rings on it, on a
corner of it that was close to me. I believed that they would be safe
there. They could not slide off canvas.’
The man’s face fell as he looked into the bottom of the boat.
‘If you’ll catch hold of this here tiller, lady,’ said he, ‘I’ll have
a search. They can’t be fur off, I hope,’ he added in a voice meant to
encourage me.
I put my hand on the tiller, but hardly knew what more to do with it
than to keep it steady. My distress was exquisite. When I looked over
the bottom of the boat and could not see any glitter of my wedding-ring
and the other two rings I shivered as though possessed with a passion
of grief. Oh, if I had been careless in removing my rings, it shocked
me to the heart to think of losing them--of losing my wedding-ring,
that symbol of my wedded love and happiness.
‘Do you see any signs of them?’ I cried to Hitchens. ‘I shall not mind
the loss of the other rings, but I must have my wedding-ring--I must
not lose it--I _cannot_ lose my wedding-ring.’
The poor fellow, with a face of real concern, groped about the bottom
of the boat. He lifted up a board, and carefully felt about with his
hand in some water that lay in a kind of well. But I was sure that if
the rings were not to be seen at once they would not be seen at all,
because there were three of them, and one at least must certainly be
visible: for though there were many crevices in the boat they were all
very shallow, and the gleam of the rings would be instantly perceptible.
‘I am afraid, lady,’ exclaimed the boatman, standing up, ‘that they’ve
gone overboard.’
I moaned.
‘I didn’t,’ he continued, ‘take any notice of ’em, and in my sudden
whipping up of the sail they must have been chucked ower the side. It’s
a bad job true-ly,’ and again he bent his figure to look.
I now realised that I had lost my rings; it had not been a loss to
be instantly felt and understood. My wedding-ring was gone; another
wedding-ring I might easily buy, but the one that was consecrated to
me by memory, the ring with which my husband had made me his wife, was
irrecoverably gone, and as I looked upon my bare hand I wept, and then
for a third time was I visited with a cold heart-subduing feeling of
loneliness.
‘Turn the boat for the land,’ I said to Hitchens. ‘I am miserable and
want to get home.’
As he came to the tiller he directed a look out at the west, or rather
I should say in the direction of the coast, for the haze had thickened
magically within the last ten minutes or so, and though the land was
scarcely above three miles distant it was little more than a dim
shadow, that seemed to be fading out even as we looked. But I was still
so grieved and distracted by the loss of my wedding-ring that I had no
eyes save for my bare hand, and no thoughts save for what was at the
bottom of the sea.
‘The wind’s shifted,’ said Hitchens. ‘It is off the land. You was
right, lady, arter all. Them clouds _was_ a-coming up. We shall have to
ratch home.’
He dragged at some ropes which held the corners of the sails, and,
moving his tiller, caused the boat to turn; but she did not turn so as
to point the head for the land.
‘Why do you not steer for Piertown?’ I said.
‘The wind’s come dead foul, lady. We shall have to ratch home.’
‘What do you mean by “ratch”?’
‘We shall have to tack--we shall have to beat back.’
I did not understand his language, but neither would I tease him by
questions. Now I was sensible that the wind had increased and was still
increasing. I lifted up my eyes and judged that the wind was coming
out of a great heap of cloud which lay over the land--the heap of cloud
whose brows I had noticed rising above the edge of the cliff; but the
mass had since then risen high, and there was a shadow upon it as if
rain were falling. The boat lay sharply over upon her side, and her
stem, as it tore through the water, made a strange stealthy noise of
hissing as though it were red hot.
‘The land is fading out of sight,’ said I.
‘Ay, it’s drawed down thicker than I expected,’ answered the boatman.
‘Is not the wind very high?’
‘It’s blowing a nice sailing breeze,’ he answered; ‘though it’s a pity
it’s shifted, as you’re in a hurry to get home.’
But as he gazed round the sea I seemed to witness an expression of
uneasiness in his face. It appeared to me that he was sailing away
from the land. I was alarmed, and questioned him. He drew a piece of
chalk from his pocket and first marked down upon the seat the situation
of the coast, then the situation of the boat, and then the process of
tacking, and how we should have to sail at angles in order to reach
Piertown harbour.
‘What time is it, Hitchens?’
He looked at his watch and said, ‘Just upon the hour of four.’
‘Oh! how the time has flown! Already four! When shall we arrive, do you
think?’
‘I’m afeared,’ he answered, ‘that I sha’n’t be able to put ye ashore
much before five.’
‘But the atmosphere continues to grow thicker. Look! some parts of the
coast are invisible. If you should lose sight of the coast, how will
you be able to steer for it?’
‘We’ll find our way home all right, lady,’ he exclaimed cheerfully.
‘Don’t be afeared. The loss of them there rings has worried ye, as
well it might, and I’d give half the worth of this boat to be able to
fish ’em up.’
I sat silent and motionless, gazing at the slowly dissolving line of
coast over the gunwale. The water was now streaming in lines, and every
line had its edging of spray, and often from these little foaming
ridges there would flash a handful of glittering crystals, as though
some hand within were hurling diamonds and prisms through the curling
head of the brine. The thickness of the atmosphere lay around the sea,
and so shrunk the plain of water that it looked no more than a lake in
size. There was also the gloom of gathering clouds in the air, not only
of the clouds which were rising off the land, but of vapour forming
overhead and sailing athwart the course of the boat in dirty shreds and
rags of the stuff that is called by sailors ‘scud!’
‘Will you hold the tiller for a moment, lady?’ said the boatman.
‘There’s summat wrong with----’ and he pronounced a technical word
which I do not remember.
I grasped the tiller and he rose and went into the bows of the boat,
where he paused for a moment, looking up; he then got upon the gunwale
of the boat and stood with his back to the sea, with one hand upon a
rope that ran from the front mast down to the bowsprit. He preserved
that posture of standing and supporting himself and looking upwards
whilst one might count ten; then let go of the rope, brought his hands
together over his heart and, with a kind of short rattling groan, fell
backwards.
The boat sat low on the water, and as the poor fellow therefore fell
from no height, he rose to the surface before the boat had gone past
him by her own length; he floated on his back, and made no effort to
swim; I do not remember witnessing a single struggle in him; whence
I judged, when I was able to think, that he had fallen dead from the
gunwale of his little vessel; and the manner in which he had seemed
to clutch at his heart, and the short rattling groan that he had
delivered, confirmed me in this belief.
When he fell I sprang to my feet with a shriek of horror. For some
moments, which would have been precious had he been alive and
struggling, I did not know what to do. My heart stood still, I could
not draw a breath. Then with lightning speed there swept into my head
the thought that if he were drowned I should be alone, and, being
alone, I should be absolutely helpless; and this thought electrified
me, and not only enabled me to reflect, but gave me power to act. For,
far more swiftly than I can relate what I did, yes, even though I was
talking to you instead of writing, I grasped one of the long heavy oars
and launched it towards the figure of the man as a spear is hurled. I
needed, indeed, the strength of terror to accomplish this; at another
time it would have taxed my strength to merely drag the oar to the side
and let it fall.
The boat had been sailing fast when the poor man dropped from the
gunwale, but when I sprang up I released the tiller, which I had
been holding steady, having no knowledge whatever of steering, and
the boat being released from the government of her helm, flew round
into the wind, but not until she had left the body of the man a long
distance behind; and then she stood upright upon the water, with her
sails angrily shaking. Wild with thought and fear, wild with despair
and terror, I kept my eyes fastened upon the body of the man. Oh, I
cried to myself, can he not swim? Will he not attempt to reach the
oar? And I screamed out his name, pointing to the direction where the
oar lay. But as I continued to point and scream out his name the body
sank. It vanished instantly, as though it had been desperately jerked
under water by some hidden grasp or fang below. I stood straining my
gaze, not knowing but that he might rise again, and then it was that
the boat, being pointed a little away from the wind by the beat of the
small, short waves, was smitten by the blast in her forward canvas;
she turned and rushed through the water, whitening it, and lying
dangerously down under the weight of her sails; but after she had
started she, of her own accord, wound round into the wind again and
sat upright, plunging quickly with her canvas rattling, and time after
time this process was repeated, whilst I stood staring round me, seeing
nothing of the land, beholding nothing, but the contracted plain of the
ocean, around which the haze or fog stood as a wall, whilst overhead
the sky was of the colour of slate, shadowed by speeding wings of scud.
It was raining, and when I looked in the direction whence the wind was
blowing, the rain that drove aslant splashed in my face. I thought to
myself, What will next happen? The boat will overset, and I shall be
drowned! What am I to do?--what am I to do? And as I thought thus,
weeping bitterly, and wringing my hands in the extremity of my grief
and fright, the boat heeled over and depressed her side so low that
the white foam she churned up flashed and roared to the level of the
line of her gunwale. I grasped the opposite side to save myself from
falling, by which I no doubt saved my life, because, had I slipped and
staggered to the depressed side, my weight must certainly have capsized
the boat. She rushed like an arrow round again into the wind and then
stopped dead, plunging yet more sharply.
I wrung my hands again and cried aloud, What am I to do? But, happily,
I had sense enough to understand that the very first thing to be done
was to lower the sail, and as I had repeatedly observed poor Hitchens
hoist the tall sheet of canvas, I knew what rope to undo, and, stepping
over the seats, I released the rope, and, the boat being at that moment
with her head pointing into the wind, the sail fell, but in falling
it enveloped me and threw me down, and it was some minutes before I
succeeded in extricating myself.
This, to be sure, was a trifling accident, for I was not in the least
degree hurt, but the being thrown down and smothered by the canvas
immeasurably heightened my distress and terror; I trembled from head
to foot, my knees yielded under me, and I was forced to sit. It was
raining hard, and the wet made the wind feel cruelly cold as it rushed
athwart the boat, whipping the crests off the waves into an angry
showering of spray. But after a little I began to find some faint
comfort in the belief that the boat was stationary. Alas, how great
was my ignorance! Because she did not appear to sail, and because she
no longer lay dangerously over, I believed she was stationary. Yet two
little sails were still set, a triangular sail at the bowsprit and a
small square sail at the stern, and I must have been crazed indeed not
to guess that whilst this canvas remained exposed the light fabric
would be blown along by the wind, either sideways or forward, and that,
as the wind blew directly from the west, every minute was widening my
distance from Piertown.
But not understanding this, I found some heart in the belief that the
boat was stationary, and I tried to comfort myself in other ways.
I said to myself, this rain may be a passing shower, the weather
will brighten presently, the boat will be in view from the coast,
my situation will be guessed at by the boatmen who hang about the
Esplanade, and they will put off to rescue me. And I also said to
myself, even if this weather should not clear up, even if I remain out
here invisible from the land, yet when my sister finds that it grows
dark and I have not returned, she is sure to go down to the harbour and
offer rewards for my rescue, and I may count upon several boats coming
out to search for me.
Thus I thought, striving to give myself heart. But oh, the desolation
of that mist-environed stretch of steel-grey water--chilly, leaping,
and streaming in froth! Oh, the cruel cold of the rain-laden wind
pouring shrilly past my ears and penetrating my wet clothes till my
breast felt like marble! Not even now could I realise my situation. I
knew that I was alone and that I was helpless, but the horizon of my
fears and wretchedness was contained in these simple perceptions. I
did not believe that I should perish. I was sure that succour would
come, and my sufferings now lay in the agony of expectation, in the
present and heart-breaking torment of waiting.
The time passed, the shadow of the evening entered the gloom of the
afternoon. It continued to rain, and the horizon lay shrouded close
to the boat, but I believe there was no increase in the wind: I
noticed no increase. But indeed I was too ignorant, too despairful,
too heartbroken to heed the weather, unless it were to observe, with
eyes half-blind with my own tears and the flying rain that the sea
was darkening, that the thickness lay close around the boat, and that
nothing ever came out of that thickness save the dusky shapes of waves.
‘Am I to be out in this boat all night?’ I thought to myself. ‘If so, I
shall die of cold and exhaustion. I cannot pass the whole long night
alone in this open boat in the rain, and in the bitter cold wind, wet
through to the skin as I already am, without anybody to speak to,
without food or drink, without a ray of light for my eyes to find
comfort in resting on. O God! O God! I cried, and I went down upon my
knees in the boat, and, clasping my hands, I gazed upwards into the
grey, wet shadow of the sky, under which the naked mast of the boat was
reeling, and I prayed to God to be with me, to watch over me, to bring
help to me before I expired of fear and cold, and to return me to my
sister, and to my little ones who were waiting for me.
And now I scarcely know how to proceed. What followed was a passage--a
horribly long passage--of mental suffering incommunicable by the pen,
nay scarcely to be remembered or understood by the sufferer herself.
It fell dark, and the black night came, the blacker because there was
no moon and because of the rain and the mist. I had gathered the wet
cloths of the sail about me as a sort of shelter, and I sat with my
head above the line of the gunwale, for ever looking to left and to
right, and to right and to left, and never seeing more than the pale,
near gleam of froth. At times thought grew maddening, and I shrieked
like one in a fit or like a woman insane. It was not the fear of death
that maddened me, it was not the anguish of the cold and the wet, nor
even the fearful loneliness of my situation, a loneliness that cannot
be imagined, for what magic is there in ink to figure the impenetrable
blackness of the night, to imitate the snapping and sobbing sounds of
the water and the hissing of the wind? No, it was the thought of my
husband and my children; and it was chiefly the thought of my children.
Again and again, when my mind went to them, I would catch myself
moaning, and again and again I shrieked. With the eye of imagination
I saw them sleeping: I saw my darling boy slumbering restfully in his
little bed, I saw my baby asleep in her little cot; I bent over them
in fancy; I kissed the golden hair of my boy, and I kissed the soft
cheek of my baby; and then the yearnings of my heart grew into agony
insupportable.
And there was a dreadful fancy that again and again visited me. Amid
the crawling and blinking foam over the boat’s side I sometimes
imagined I saw the body of Hitchens. It came and went. I knew it was a
deception of the senses, yet I stared as though it were there indeed.
Sometimes there would come a sound in the wind that resembled the groan
he had uttered when he fell overboard.
At some hour of the night, but whether before or after midnight I could
not have told, I was looking over the right side of the boat when a
large shadow burst out of the darkness close to. It swept by wrapped in
gloom. It was a vessel, and she whitened the throbbing dusky surface
over which she passed with a confused tumble of froth. There was not
a single spot of light upon her. Her sails blended with the midnight
obscurity, and were indistinguishable. Indeed she was to be heard
rather than seen, for the noise of the wind was strong and shrill in
her rigging, and the sound of her passage through the water was like
a rending of satin. She was visible, and then she was gone even as I
looked.
All night long it rained, and it was raining at daybreak in a fine thin
drizzle. The sea was shrouded as on the previous afternoon. When the
cold and iron grey of the dawn was upon the atmosphere, I feebly lifted
up my head, marvelling to find myself alive. I looked about me with my
eyes as languid as those of a dying person’s, and beheld nothing but
the streaming waters running out of the haze on one side and vanishing
in the haze on the other side. Had I then possessed the knowledge of
the sea that I afterwards gained, I might have known by the character
of the waves that during the night the boat had been swept a long
distance out. The billows were large and heavy, and the movements of
the boat, whose sails were too small to steady her, were wild. Yet she
rose and fell buoyantly. These things I afterwards recollected.
I was without hunger, but the presence of daylight sharpening my
faculties somewhat I felt thirsty, and no sooner was I conscious of the
sensation of thirst than the perception that it was not to be assuaged
raised it into a torment. There was water in the bottom of the boat; I
dipped my finger into one of the puddles and put the moisture to my
lips. It was brackish, almost indeed as salt as the water of the sea.
I pressed my parched lips to the sodden sail, which I had pulled over
my shoulders, and the moisture of it was as salt as the puddle I had
dipped my finger into.
And now, after this time, I have but a very indistinct recollection of
what followed. All my memories are vague, as though I had dimly dreamed
of what I saw and suffered. I recollect that I felt shockingly ill,
and that I believed I was dying. I recollect that during some hour of
this day I beheld a smudge in the grey shadow of mist and rain on my
right, that it kindled an instant’s hope in me, that I held open with
difficulty my heavy wet eyelids and watched it in a sickly and fainting
way, believing it might prove a boat sent in search of me. I followed
it with my gaze until it melted away in the thickness. I recollect
that the day passed, and that the blackness of a second night came;
but, this remembered, all else is a blank in my brain.
I opened my eyes and found myself in gloom. A few inches above me was
a shelf; I supposed it to be a shelf. Dim as the light was, there was
enough of it to enable me to see that what was stretched just above me
was not part of a ceiling. I lay looking at it. I then turned my head
on to my right cheek and beheld a wall. I touched it to make sure. I
passed my hand slowly over it, and then looked up again at the shelf
that was stretched over my head. I then turned my head and perceived a
little circle of greenish light. I stared at this strange glimmering
disk of light for a long while, again looked upwards, and again feebly
passed my hand over the wall.
I did not ask myself where I was; I felt no curiosity. I was as one in
whom an intellect has been suddenly created, and who passively accepts
what the sight rests on. I lay turning my head from cheek to cheek for
some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, during which my eyes, having
grown used to the gloom that was faintly touched by that circle of
greenish light, began to distinguish objects. And first I saw that I
was in a very little dark room, lying upon a sort of shelf which, with
the upper shelf, resembled a long box, of which one side was wanting;
and scarcely had I perceived that I was in a little dark room than I
became sensible that I was upon the water: for, as I lay on the shelf,
I felt that my body was rolled from side to side, and I also felt an
upwards motion and then a downwards motion, and I knew that I was at
sea.
Then I thought to myself, I am in the cabin of a ship. But how did I
get here and who am I? Having said to myself _Who am I_? I repeated
the words over and over again; but as yet without surprise, without
terror. The question haunted my mind with languid iteration, but it
induced no emotion. I felt sick and extraordinarily weak. Something
irritated my brow, and, lifting my hand, I found my right temple and
the eyebrow and a portion of the nose as far as the bridge of it pasted
over with some hard substance. I ran my fingers over this substance,
but without wonderment, and then my arm fell exhausted to my side, and
feebly turning my head on to my left cheek, I stared at the glimmering
green disc, whilst I kept on thinking to myself, but without agitation
or fear, _Who am I_?
It did not strike me as in the least degree strange that I should
not know who I was. I lay looking, and I saw a man’s coat swinging
by a nail near the little circle of dim light. I also saw a common
cane-bottom chair and a dark chest, which I have since learnt to call
by its proper name of ‘locker.’ From the ceiling of this little room
there swung, suspended by thin brass chains, a strange-looking lamp,
formed of a globe of metal with a glass chimney. I continued to watch
that lamp swing until my eyelids closed, but whether I fainted or
slumbered I am unable to say.
When I awoke or regained consciousness the glimmering circle of
glass had changed from dim green into bright yellow. It rippled with
brilliance as from the reflection of sunshine upon water, and there
was daylight in the little cabin. I heard the sound of a fiddle and
the voice of a man singing. The sounds were on the other side of the
wall which I had felt over with my hand when I first awoke. Presently
the music ceased, and almost at the moment that it ceased I heard the
rattle of a door-handle and what looked to be a shapeless bulk stood at
my side.
On straining my dim sight I saw that the figure was that of an
immensely fat man. He stood with his back to the circular window, and
for some while I was unable to discern his features. Meanwhile he
stared at me as though there was nothing in my fixed look to satisfy
him that I was alive or dead. His face was perfectly round and his
cheeks puffed out as if he were in the act of blowing. Upon his upper
lip were a few short straggling hairs, iron grey; his hair was scanty
and grizzled; his complexion was a brick red, apparently from exposure
to weather. Yet his fat face was deprived of the expression of stupid
good nature that one commonly finds in such countenances by a pair of
heavy, shaggy, almost white eyebrows, which, coming close together over
the top of his nose, stamped the look of an habitual frown upon his
forehead. His eyes were small, black and piercing, and his age might
have been anything between fifty and sixty. He wore a red cap, the
tasselled point of which fell over his ear, and his dress consisted of
a soiled and well-worn pilot-coat hanging loose over an equally soiled
and well-worn velveteen jacket. A large shawl was wound round his
neck, and there were gold hoops in his ears. These points I afterwards
witnessed. All that I now observed was his large round face of a dusky
crimson and the small black eyes in it fixed upon me.
At last he exclaimed, in a deep voice: ‘Tiens, vous voilà enfin
éveillée, après trois jours de sommeil! Eh bien, j’espère que
maintenant vous soyez en état de prendre quelque nourriture et de me
dire ce que vous êtes. Peste! que n’avez-vous donc échappé! C’est vrai
les femmes peuvent supporter plus que les hommes. Elles ne sont pas si
facilement écrasées que nous autres pauvres diables.’
I listened to these words and understood them, but I did not know they
were French. Yet though I could not have given a name to the tongue
in which the man spoke I knew what he said. My knowledge of French
suffered me to read it and slightly understand it when spoken, but I
was unable to converse in it.
What he had said was: ‘So then you are awake at last! Three days of
sleep! Well, now you will be able to eat and drink, I hope, and tell me
who you are. Peste! what an escape! But women have more endurance than
men. They are not so easily destroyed as us poor devils.’
I gazed at him without answering. He addressed me again in French.
‘What do you say?’ I whispered.
‘Aha! you are Angleesh,’ exclaimed the man in his deep voice, and he
added in French, ‘Stop! I will go and fetch Alphonse.’
His shapeless bulk moved away from the side of the shelf and I lay
motionless, with my eyes fixed upon the bright circle of glass upon
which the reflection of sunny waters without was dancing. But I do not
know what I thought of. I cannot remember that any sort of determinable
idea visited me. My mind seemed empty, with one strange question for
ever dully echoing in it: _Who am I?_ Yet I also seemed to know that
I was not mad. I could not tell who I was, but I felt that I was not
mad. I do not say that my instincts assured me of this; I seemed to be
sensible of it passively. It was a perception independent of all effort
of mind, a knowledge wholly involuntary as the action of the heart is
involuntary.
In a few minutes I heard the door-handle rattle again and two
figures came to the side of the shelf on which I lay. One was the
same stout personage that had previously visited me; the other was
a clean, fresh-looking young man of the age of four or five and
twenty, smoothly shaven, with coal black hair and eyes, his face of
a pronounced French type. He was fairly well dressed in a suit of
grey, and his white shirt collar was buttoned low so as to expose the
whole of his long throat and even a portion of his chest. His posture
suggested an air of habitual attention and respect, and after he had
peered a while and observed that my eyes were open he removed his cap.
‘Speak to her Alphonse,’ said the large stout man.
‘How do you do, madame? How do you now feel?’ said the younger man in
good English, pronouncing the words with an excellent accent.
I answered faintly, ‘I believe I am dying. Where am I?’
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed quickly, ‘you have not eaten, you have not drunken.
It is impossible for people to live unless they eat and drink.’
He then addressed himself hurriedly to the fat man, who acquiesced with
a grunt and a gesture of the hand. The young man went out, whilst the
other remained at my side, fixedly staring at me. Even had I been able
to exert my mind for conversation I could not have found my voice. It
pained me to whisper. The stout man addressed me once in barbarous
English; I languidly gazed at him in silence through my half-closed
eyelids, and no more was said until the young man returned, bearing
in one hand a cup and saucer and in the other hand a tumbler. The cup
contained some warm soup; the tumbler some weak brandy and water. Now
ensued a brief discussion between the two men as to whether the brandy
should be administered before the soup or the soup before the brandy.
The younger man’s views prevailed and, correctly judging that I was
unable to feed myself, he drew the cane-bottom chair to my side, seated
himself and fed me.
The fat man stood with a stolid countenance, looking on. When I had
swallowed the soup the young man applied the tumbler to my lips and I
slowly drank.
‘Now,’ said the young man, ‘do you feel more comfortable?’
I whispered that I felt better.
‘That is right,’ said he. ‘You must keep quiet whether you sleep or
not. I am not a doctor, but I know a thing or two. I will visit you
again in two hours with more soup and _eau-de-vie_.’ And he said to the
fat man in his native tongue, ‘Come, uncle, she will do. She will not
die. Let us leave her.’
They then withdrew.