We shall contrive to bring him round in a few days, I daresay, though he certainly has got into a very low state." 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.