The doctor said this rather gravely, on which the passenger again became disturbed of aspect.  A death on board ship must needs be such an unpleasant business, and he really had not bargained for anything of that kind.  What was the use of paying first-class fare on board a first-class vessel, if one were subject to annoyance of this sort?  In the steerage of an overcrowded emigrant ship such a thing might be a matter of course—­a mere natural incident of the voyage—­but on board the Oronoco it was most unlooked for.

“He’s not going to die, is he?” asked the passenger, with an injured air.

“O dear, no, I should hope not.  I have no apprehension of that sort,” replied the surgeon promptly.

He would no doubt have said the same thing up to within an hour or so of the patient’s decease.

“There is an extreme debility, that is all,” he went on quite cheerfully; “and if we can induce him to take plenty of nourishment, we shall get on very well, I daresay.”

After this the nervous passenger was profoundly interested in the amount of refreshment consumed by the patient, and questioned the steward about him with a most sympathetic air.

John Saltram, otherwise John Holbrook, was not destined to die upon this outward voyage.  He was very eager to be well, or at least to be at liberty to move about again; and perhaps this impatient desire of his helped in some measure to bring about his recovery.  The will, physiologists tell us, has a great deal to do with these things.

The voyage was a prosperous one.  The good ship steamed gaily across the Atlantic through the bleak spring weather; and there was plenty of eating and drinking, and joviality and flirtation on board her, while John Saltram lay upon his back, very helpless, languishing to be astir once more.

During these long dreary days and nights he had contrived to send several messages to the lady in the state-cabin, feeble pencil scrawls, imploring her to come to him, telling her that he was very ill, at death’s door almost, and desired nothing so much as to see her, if only for a moment.  But the answer—­by word of mouth of the steward or stewardess always—­was unfailingly to the same effect:—­the lady in number 7 refused to hold any communication with the sick gentleman.

“She’s a hard one!” the steward remarked to the stewardess, when they talked the matter over in a comfortable manner during the progress of a snug little supper in the steward’s cabin, “she must be an out-and-out hard-hearted one to stand out against him like that, if he is her husband, and I suppose he is.  I told her to-day—­when I took his message—­how bad he was, and that it was a chance if he ever went ashore alive; but she was walking up and down deck with her father ten minutes afterwards, laughing and talking like anything.  I suppose he’s been a bad lot, Mrs. Peterson, and deserves no better from her; but still it does seem hard to see him lying there, and his wife so near him, and yet refusing to go and see him.”