signature. The writer was
the doctor. The date was that of the day on which, returning from my
visit to Mr. Burns in the hospital, I had found the excellent doctor
waiting for me in the cabin; and when he told me that he had been
putting in time inspecting the medicine chest for me. How bizarre! While
expecting me to come in at any moment he had been amusing himself by
writing me a letter, and then as I came in had hastened to stuff it into
the medicine-chest drawer. A rather incredible proceeding. I turned to
the text in wonder.

In a large, hurried, but legible hand the good, sympathetic man for some
reason, either of kindness or more likely impelled by the irresistible
desire to express his opinion, with which he didn't want to damp my
hopes before, was warning me not to put my trust in the beneficial
effects of a change from land to sea. "I didn't want to add to your
worries by discouraging your hopes," he wrote. "I am afraid that,
medically speaking, the end of your troubles is not yet." In short,
he expected me to have to fight a probable return of tropical illness.
Fortunately I had a good provision of quinine. I should put my trust in
that, and administer it steadily, when the ship's health would certainly
improve.

I crumpled up the letter and rammed it into my pocket. Ransome carried
off two big doses to the men forward. As to myself, I did not go on deck
as yet. I went instead to the door of Mr. Burns' room, and gave him that
news, too.

It was impossible to say the effect it had on him. At first I thought
that he was speechless. His head lay sunk in the pillow. He moved his
lips enough, however, to assure me that he was getting much stronger; a
statement shockingly untrue on the face of it.

That afternoon I took my watch as a matter of course. A great
over-heated stillness enveloped the ship and seemed to hold her
motionless in a flaming ambience composed in two shades of blue. Faint,
hot puffs eddied nervelessly from her sails. And yet she moved. She must
have. For, as the sun was setting, we had drawn abreast of Cape Liant
and dropped it behind us: an ominous retreating shadow in the last
gleams of twilight.

In the evening, under the crude glare of his lamp, Mr. Burns seemed to
have come more to the surface of his bedding. It was as if a
depressing hand had been lifted off him. He answered my few words by a
comparatively long, connected speech. He asserted himself strongly.
If he escaped being sm