Several times he asked for water, and once looked at
me curiously, with a faint attempt at a smile, before his head again sank
down on the pillow.
Finally the sunlight came again, shortly after the smoky lamp had been
extinguished, and I went out of the house, when the chill of the early
morning seized me so that for a moment my teeth chattered. The woman
followed me.
"He do be a dreadful long time dyin'," she said, miserably.
I suppose that I was nervous and weary with the two long nights of
watching, and lost mastery over myself. To me those words sounded
heartless, although now I realize they came from the depth of her woe.
"You have no right to say such things," I reproved her sharply. "I don't
think he is going to die. I believe that we have saved him."
Then she sank on the ground, grasping one of my chilly hands and weeping
over it. These were the first tears she had shed and I saw how grievously
I had erred. As gently as I could I lifted her to her feet.
"I'm sorry I spoke so gruffly," I said. "But I really believe that we are
going to pull him through, and that we shall save his arm."
At noon-time we saw the white yacht coming out of Sweetapple Cove. She
was speeding away in the direction of St. John's. The weather was
beginning to spoil, and at the foot of the seaward cliffs the great seas,
smooth and oily, boomed with great crashes that portended a coming storm.
Early in the afternoon the wind was coming in black squalls, accompanied
by a rolling mist.
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