Page:Off For Hawaii.djvu/53

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A BAD MAN SUDDENLY DISAPPEARS.
41

My second recovery came an hour later, and then I felt much stronger. But the physician would not let me sit up, excepting to swallow some stimulants he had prepared for me. It was now broad daylight and the hurricane was a thing of the past.

As I lay there flat on my back, I could not get the one-armed sailor out of my mind. Beyond a doubt he must be drowned. Was I responsible for his death?

The thought made me break out into a cold perspiration, and before night a fever followed, and once more I was at the rail fighting for my life amid the fury of the hurricane. Caleb Merkin's eyes glared fiercely into my own, until they burned themselves into my brain, and the fever rose until both Dr. Barton and the regular steamer physician were in grave fear for my life.

What followed was not made clear to me until two weeks later. The run to Honolulu was finished without further incident, and once we had landed I was taken by Dr. Barton and my two companions to the Queen's Hospital, a commodious institution, set in a garden of tropical trees and shrubbery. Here I was given a delightful room, opening upon a wide veranda, where the trade winds from the north made all as cool as could be expected.

The doctor who attended me here was an Eng-