She drew
herself up and looked at them, and they slunk past her in silence.
Then she returned to the hut. Mr. Meeson was sitting up when she entered,
and the bright light from the open door fell full upon his face. His
appearance fairly shocked her. The heavy cheeks had fallen in, there were
great purple rings round his hollow eyes, and his whole aspect was one of
a man in the last stage of illness.
"I have had such a night" he said, "Oh, Heaven! such a night! I don't
believe that I shall live through another."
"Nonsense!" said Augusta, "eat some biscuit and you will feel better."
He took a piece of the biscuit which she gave him, and attempted to
swallow it, but could not.
"It is no use," he said; "I am a dying man. Sitting in those wet clothes
in the boat has finished me."
And Augusta, looking at his face, could not but believe him.
CHAPTER IX.
AUGUSTA TO THE RESCUE.
After breakfast--that is, after Augusta had eaten some biscuit and a wing
that remained from the chickens she had managed to cook upon the previous
day--Bill and Johnnie, the two sailors, set to work, at her suggestion,
to fix up a long fragment of drift-wood on a point of rock, and to bind
it on to a flag that they happened to find in the locker of the boat.
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