I WAS wakened - Indeed, we were all wakened, for I could see even the sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the door-post - by a clear, hearty voice hailing us from the margin of the wood:--`Block-house, ahoy!' it cried. `Here's the doctor.'
And the doctor it was. Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct; and when I saw where it had brought me - among what companions and surrounded by what dangers - I felt ashamed to look him in the face.
He must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly come; and when I ran to a loophole and looked out, I saw him standing, like Silver once before, up to the mid-leg in creeping vapour.
`You, doctor! Top o' the morning to you, sir!' cried Silver, broad awake and beaming with good-nature in a moment. `Bright and early, to be sure; and it's the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rat.ions. George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Dr Livesey over the ship's side. All a-doin' well, your patients was - all well and merry.'
So he pattered on, standing on the hill-top, with his crutch under his elbow, and one hand upon the side of the log-house - quite the old John in voice, manner, and expression.
`We've quite a surprise for you, too, sir,' he continued. `We've a little stranger here - he! he! A noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit and taut as a fiddle; slep' like a supercargo, he did, right alongside of John - stem to stem we was, all night.'
Dr Livesey was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the cook; and I could hear the alteration in his voice as he said:--`Not Jim?'
`The very same Jim as ever was,' says Silver.
The doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak, and it was some seconds before he seemed able to move on.
`Well, well,' he said, at last, `duty first and pleasure afterwards, as you might have said yourself, Silver. Let us overhaul these patients of yours.'
A moment afterwards he had entered the block-house, and, with one grim nod to me, proceeded with his work among the sick. He seemed under no apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men; for they behaved to him as if nothing had occurred - as if he were still ship's doctor, and they still faithful hands before the mast.
`You're doing well, my friend,' he said to the fellow with the bandaged head, `and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head must be as hard as iron. Well, George, how goes it? You're a pretty colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. Did you take that medicine?
Did he take that medicine, men?'
`Ay, ay, sir, he took it, sure enough,' returned Morgan.
`Because, you see, since I am mutineers' doctor, or prison doctor, as I prefer to call it,' says Dr Livesey, in his pleasantest way, `I make it a point of honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!) and the gallows.'
The rogues looked at each other, but swallowed the home-thrust in silence.
`**** don't feel well, sir,' said one.
`Don't he?' replied the doctor. `Well, step up here, ****, and let me see your tongue. No, I should be surprised if he did! the man's tongue is fit to frighten the French. Another fever.'
`Ah, there,' said Morgan, `that comed of sp'iling Bibles.'
`That comed - as you call it - of being arrant asses, retorted the doctor, `and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable - though, of course, it's only an opinion - that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you?
Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.'
`Well,' he added, after he had dosed them round, and they had taken his preions, with really laughable humility, more like charity school-children than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates - `well, that's done for to-day.
And now I should wish to have a talk with that boy, please.'
And he nodded his head in my direction carelessly.
George Merry was at the door, spitting and spluttering over some bad-tasted medicine; but at the first word of the doctor's proposal he swung round with a deep flush, and cried `No!' and swore.
Silver struck the barrel with his open hand.
`Si-lence!' he roared, and looked about him positively like a lion.
`Doctor,' he went on, in his usual tones, `I was a-thinking of that, knowing as how you had a fancy for the boy. We're all humbly grateful for your kindness, and, as you see, puts faith in you, and takes the drugs down like that much grog. And I take it I've found a way as'll suit all. Hawkins, will you give me your word of honour as a young gentleman - for a young gentleman you are, although poor born - your word of honour not to slip your cable?
I readily gave the pledge required.
`Then, doctor,' said Silver, `you just step outside o' that stockade, and once you're there, I'll the bring the boy down on the inside, and I reckon you can yarn through the spars. Good-day to you, sir, and all our dooties to the squire and Cap'n Smollett.'