"He's been very bad," said the nurse; "bronchitis and great weakness--been starving for weeks, the doctor thinks. Talks English all right when his temperature is down, but raves to himself in a sort of double-Dutch no one can understand, though we have French and Germans and Russians in the ward."
"Fy Nuw, fy Nuw, paham y'm gadewaist?" cried the old man, and I recognized the cry from the Cross, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
"Oh! lady," he exclaimed as I sat down beside him--"oh! lady, get me out of this. My mates tell me as I'm in the workhouse, and if my old mother knew it would kill her--it would, indeed. Yes, lady, I follow the sea--went off with my old dad when I was eight year old; we sailed our old ship _Pollybach_ for wellnigh forty years; and then she foundered off Bushy Island Reef, Torres Straits, and we lost nearly all we had. After that I've sailed with Captain Jones, of the _Highflyer_, as first mate; but now he's dead I can't get a job nohow. I'm too old, and I've lost my left hand; some tackle got loose in a storm and fell upon it, and though the hook is wonderful handy, they won't enter me any more as an A.B.
"I'm a skipper of the ancient time--a Chantey-man and a fiddler. I can navigate, checking the chronometer by lunar observation. I can rig a ship from rail to truck; I can reef, hand-steer, and set and take in a top-mast studding sail; and I can show the young fools how to use a marlin-spike. Yes, indeed! But all this is no good now.
"I came up to London to find an old shipmate--Hugh Pugh. We sailed together fifty years ago, but he left the sea when he got married and started in the milk business in London. We was always good mates, and he said to me not long ago, down in Wales, that the Lord had prospered him, and that I was to turn to him in any trouble. So when my skipper died I remembered me of Hugh Pugh, and slung my bundle to come and find him. Folks was wonderful kind to me along the road, and I sailed along in fair weather till I got to London; and then I was fair frightened; navigation is very difficult along the streets--the craft's too crowded--and folks were shocking hard and unkind. I cruised about for a long time, but London's a bigger place than I thought, knowing only the docks; and David Evans doesn't seem to have got the address quite ship-shape, and I just drifted and lost faith. Somehow it's harder to trust the Lord in London than on the high seas. Then the mates tell me I fainted and was brought into the ship's hospital; and here I've lain, a-coughing, and a-burning, and a-shivering, with queer tunes a-playing in my head; couldn't remember the English, they say, and talked only Welsh; and they thought I was a Dutchman. This morning I felt a sight better, and though the nurse told me not to get up, I just tried to put on my clothes and go; but blowed if my legs didn't behave shocking--rolled to larboard, rolled to starboard, and then pitched me headlong, so that I thought I'd shivered all my timbers. So I suppose I must lie at anchor a bit longer; my legs will never stand the homeward voyage, they're that rotten and barnacled; but I'll never get better here; what I'm sickening for is the sea--the sight of her, and the smell of her, and the noise of the waves round the helm; she and me's never been parted before for more than two days, and I'm as sick for her as a man for his lass. Oh, dear! oh, dear! If I could only find Hugh Pugh----"