s; but I was very
tired after my labours, and I finally persuaded myself to postpone the
task for a while--to my subsequent intense regret.

The anniversary of the wreck of the _Yorkshire Lass_ arrived and passed.
We had been a whole year on the group, and, so far as we knew, not a
solitary sail of any description had come within sight of the islands
during the whole of those twelve months. It was an astounding,
incomprehensible fact; I had never really anticipated such a
possibility. With the passage of each day, each week, each month, I had
said to myself--with gradually waning assurance certainly--"It cannot be
long now before a craft of some sort comes along to take us off," until
the moment when it suddenly dawned upon me that if we were ever to
escape, it must be through our own efforts--my own especially. This
conviction now came upon me with overwhelming force; my hopes of
deliverance by means of some extraneous agency suddenly sank to zero,
and I began to work with such febrile energy that it presently drew from
Billy a steadily growing flood of remonstrance.

I had by this time expended so much of my material that I was in the
very act of preparing for another visit to the wreck to obtain more when
poor Billy fell sick of some sort of a fever. Within three hours of his
seizure he became delirious and was so extremely violent that--he being
by this time a strong sturdy boy--I was obliged to at once drop
everything else to look after him and see that he did not injure himself
during the more severe paroxysms. Of course I had long ago taken the
precaution to secure possession of the ship's medicine-chest, with its
accompanying book of instructions; but the latter afforded me little
help, for I could find in it no case the symptoms of which quite
corresponded with those of my patient, and I was therefore compelled to
rely very much upon my own judgment, and upon the instructions for the
treatment of fevers in general. A liberal administration of quinine
seemed to constitute the most hopeful form of treatment, and luckily we
possessed an ample supply of the drug. I accordingly dosed Billy with
it for close upon sixty hours, when the delirium ceased and the poor boy
sank into a semi-stupor of exhaustion, which enabled one of the native
women to relieve me by watching at the patient's bedside. I had by this
time been without sleep for two nights and more than three days, and I
was therefore glad enough to be