the disease gained ground, its characteristic languor unstrung his force; the hard and sinewy limbs became attenuated and relaxed; his breath labored; a hectic fever burnt in his veins like light flame every afternoon, and subsided into chilly languor toward morning; profuse night-sweats increased the weakness; and as he grew feebler, offering of course less resistance to the febrile symptoms, they were exacerbated, till at times a slight delirium showed itself; and so, without haste or delay, he “made for port,” as he said.

His name was Eben Jackson, and the homely appellation was no way belied by his aspect.  He never could have been handsome, and now fifteen years of rough-and-tumble life had left their stains and scars on his weather-beaten visage, whose only notable features were the deep-set eyes retreating under shaggy brows, that looked one through and through with the keen glance of honest instinct; while a light tattooing of red and blue on either cheek-bone added an element of the grotesque to his homeliness.  He was a natural and simple man, with whom conventionalities and the world’s scale went for nothing,—­without vanity as without guile.—­But it is best to let him speak for himself.  I found him that night very feverish, yet not wild at all.

“Hullo, Doctor!” said he, “I’m all afire!  I’ve ben thinkin’ about my old mother’s humstead up to Simsbury, and the great big well to the back door; how I used to tilt that ’are sweep up, of a hot day, till the bucket went ‘way down to the bottom and come up drippin’ over,—­such cold, clear water!  I swear, I’d give all Madagascar for a drink on’t!”

I called the nurse to bring me a small basket of oranges I had sent out in the morning, expressly for this patient, and squeezing the juice from one of them on a little bit of ice, I held it to his lips, and he drank eagerly.

“That’s better for you than water, Jackson,” said I.

“I dunno but ’tis, Doctor; I dunno but ‘tis; but there a’n’t nothin’ goes to the spot like that Simsbury water.  You ha’n’t never v’yaged to them parts, have ye?”

“Bless you, yes, man!  I was born and brought up in Hartford, just over the mountain, and I’ve been to Simsbury, fishing, many a time.”

“Good Lord! You don’t never desert a feller, ef the ship is a-goin’ down!” fervently ejaculated Eben, looking up as he did sometimes in his brief delirium, when he said the Lord’s Prayer, and thought his mother held his folded hands; but this was no delirious aspiration.  He went on:—­

“You see, Doctor, I’ve had somethin’ in the hold a good spell’t I wanted to break bulk on, but I didn’t know as I ever was goin’ to see a shipmet agin; and now you’ve jined convoy jist in time, for Davy Jones’s a’n’t fur off.  Are you calculatin’ to go North afore long?”

“Yes, I mean to go next spring,” said I.

Jackson began to fumble with weak and trembling hands about his throat, to undo his shirt-collar,—­he would not let me help him,—­and presently, flushed and panting from the effort, he drew out a length of delicate Panama chain fastened rudely together by a link of copper wire, and suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet.  Jackson looked at it as I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness.