It came, and surged over the man, and the girl, and up to old Willis’s throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered with the strain:  but when the cataract had disappeared, the chain was still unbroken.

“Saved!” and a cheer broke from all lips, save those of the girl herself; she was as senseless as he whom she had saved.  They hurried her and him up the rock ere another wave could come; but they had much ado to open her hands, so firmly clenched together were they round his waist.

Gently they lifted each, and laid them on the rock; while old Willis, having recovered his breath, set to work crying like a child, to restore breath to “his maiden.”

“Run for Dr. Heale, some good Christian!” But Frank, longing to escape from a company who did not love him, and to be of some use ere the night was out, was already half-way to the village on that very errand.

However, ere the Doctor could be stirred out of his boozy slumbers, and thrust into his clothes by his wife, the schoolmistress was safe in bed at her mother’s house; and the man, weak, but alive, carried triumphantly up to Heale’s door; which having been kicked open, the sailors insisted in carrying him right upstairs, and depositing him on the best spare bed.

“If you won’t come to your patients, Doctor, your patients shall come to you.  Why were you asleep in your liquors, instead of looking out for poor wratches, like a Christian?  You see whether his bones be broke, and gi’un his medicines proper; and then go and see after the schoolmistress; she’m worth a dozen of any man, and a thousand of you!  We’ll pay for ’un like men; and if you don’t, we’ll break every bottle in your shop.”

To which, what between bodily fear and real good-nature, old Heale assented; and so ended that eventful night.

CHAPTER IV.

FLOTSOM, JETSOM, AND LAGEND.

About nine o’clock the next morning, Gentleman Jan strolled into Dr. Heale’s surgery, pipe in mouth, with an attendant satellite; for every lion, poor as well as rich,—­in country as in town, must needs have his jackal.

Heale’s surgery—­or, in plain English, shop—­was a doleful hole enough; in such dirt and confusion as might be expected from a drunken occupant, with a practice which was only not decaying because there was no rival in the field.  But monopoly made the old man, as it makes most men, all the more lazy and careless; and there was not a drug on his shelves which could be warranted to work the effect set forth in that sanguine and too trustful book, the Pharmacopoeia, which, like Mr. Pecksniff’s England, expects every man to do his duty, and is, accordingly (as the Lancet and Dr. Letheby know too well), grievously disappointed.

In this kennel of evil savours, Heale was slowly trying to poke things into something like order; and dragging out a few old drugs with a shaky hand, to see if any one would buy them, in a vague expectation that something must needs have happened to somebody the night before, which would require somewhat of his art.