The Complete Novels of Robert L. Stevenson (Illustrated). Robert Louis Stevenson

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      Chapter XXX

       On Parole

       Table of Contents

      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 rations. 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 hilltop 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?”

      “Aye, aye, 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 Doctor 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.

      “Dick don’t feel well, sir,” said one.

      “Don’t he?” replied the doctor. “Well, step up here, Dick, 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 comes — as you call it — of being arrant asses,” retorted the doctor, “and not having СКАЧАТЬ