turned the ship was at once got under way for her northern
voyage.

The attentions of Sedgwick to his sick friend were simply incessant. The
ship's surgeon was also assiduous in his care. Captain McGregor was all
the time most solicitous. As they approached the equator, they fixed for
Jordan a bed on deck where the air, even if it was hot, was better in
motion over him than in the stifling state-room.

The ship rounded the great cape in ten days, and reached the Red Sea on
the twelfth day. Then the surgeon motioned Sedgwick aside, and said: "The
case of your friend makes me very anxious. His wound is not of itself
serious. He has a little fever, but it would not be of a dangerous type
in an ordinary patient. In this case the sick man acts like one who has
lost hope, and under the sorrow of his loss his nerve power has ceased to
exert its force, and the man is liable to die simply because he will make
no effort to live."

"I know," said Sedgwick, "and I have been dreading such a report as you
have made me, for the last seven days. If you can keep his life from
going out until we can reach Naples, I believe we can then find a tonic
that will save him."

"I will try," was the answer, "but he is growing weaker every day, and I
am afraid. However, the temperature is growing cooler and it gives us a
better chance."

Sedgwick tried by talking, by reading, and by drawing rosy pictures of
what they would do in England and America, to rouse Jordan, but without
much success.

He lay patient and still on his couch, and to all inquiries would answer:
"I'm perfectly comfortable, dear friend. Do not worry about me;
everything is as it should be."

Then Sedgwick tried another experiment. He told the sick man that he must
exert himself to be better; that sickness was often influenced by the
will of the patient, and added that the real work of trying to undo the
wrong perpetrated upon Browning would have to be done when they reached
England, and that he should then need the best counsel and help of his
friend.

Jordan listened and said: "I'll do the best I ken, Jim, but it will be
all right, I'm shor."

So the hours went by, and Captain McGregor told the engineer to crowd on
all steam, and to bribe the fireman to give the ship all the speed
possible.

At Suez, Sedgwick went ashore and cabled his wife that he was on the
"Pallas;" to come at once to Naples; to induce Jack and Rose to come
also, and, if she thought best, to br