Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/397

Rh The man gained strength, as we gave him nourishment in small, frequent doses, and talked in a disjointed way of everything under the sun. I sat with him all night. Toward morning he seemed to sleep longer at a time, and in the afternoon of yesterday fell into a deep slumber, from which he did not waken for nearly twenty hours.

When he did waken, he took nourishment in larger quantities, and then went off into another long sleep. The look of pain on his face lessened, a healthy glow appeared on his cheek, and he slept so soundly that I turned in—on the floor.

I was awake along in the small hours of the morning, and heard my patient stirring, so I got up and drew the little curtain over the bulls-eye port—it was already daylight. I gave him a drink and a biscuit, and told him I would go to the cook's galley and get him some broth, but he begged to wait until breakfast time—said he felt refreshed, and would just nibble a sea biscuit. Then he ate a dozen in as many minutes.

"Did you take care of my pack?" he said eagerly, throwing his legs out of the berth, and looking wildly at me.

"Yes, it's all right; lie down and rest," said I; for I thought that to cross him would set him off his head again.

"Do you know that dirty old pack contains more treasures than the mines of Africa?"

"It don't look it," I answered, and laughed to get him in a pleasant frame of mind—for I hadn't seen nor heard of his pack.

"Not for the little gold and other valuable things, but the proofs of a discovery as great as Columbus made, the discovery of a new continent, a new people, a new language, a new civilization, and riches beyond the dreams of a Solomon"

He shut his eyes for a minute, and then continued: "But beyond Purgatory, through Death, and the other side of Hell"

Just here Enoch came in to inquire after his health, and sat down for a minute's chat. Enoch is first, last, and all the time captain of a whaler; he knows about whales and whale-hunters just as an engineer on the road knows every speck of scenery along the line, every man, and every engine. Enoch couldn't talk ten minutes without being "reminded" of an incident in his whaling life; couldn't meet a whale-man without "yarning" about the whale business. He lit his pipe and asked: "Been whaling, or hunting the North Pole?"

"Well, both."

"What ship?"

"The 'Duncan McDonald.

"The—the 'McDonald!'—why, man, we counted her lost these five years; tell me about her, quick. Old Chuck Burrows was a particular friend of mine—where is he?"

"Captain, Father Burrows and the 'Duncan McDonald' have both gone over the unknown ocean to the port of missing ships."

"Sunk?"

"Aye, and crushed to atoms in a frozen hell."

Enoch looked out of the little window for a long time, forgot his pipe, and at last wiped a tear out of his eye, saying, as much to himself as to us: "George Burrows made me first mate of the first ship he ever sailed. She was named for his mother, and we left her in the ice away up about the seventy-third parallel. He was made of the salt of