But that was all over now.

He knew that it was the most unlikely thing in the world to have come to pass; and yet those were happy days when he could think of it as barely possible.

Now all he could look forward to was disfigurement, feebleness, and the bare pittance that keeps pensioners from absolute want.
Those around him were kind enough to him in their fashion, and attended to his bodily requirements; but they had no notion of listening to any revelations of unhappiness, if Philip had been the man to make confidences of that kind.

As it was, he lay very still in his berth, seldom asking for anything, and always saying he was better, when the ship-surgeon came round with his daily inquiries.
But he did not care to rally, and was rather sorry to find that his case was considered so interesting in a surgical point of view, that he was likely to receive a good deal more than the average amount of attention.

Perhaps it was owing to this that he recovered at all.
The doctors said it was the heat that made him languid, for that his wounds and burns were all doing well at last; and by-and-by they told him they had ordered him 'home'.