I am knocked up with over exertion and excitement--that's all; my strength will come back to me sooner or later if I lie quietly here." The steward gave way, for the time being, upon this appeal, and the surgeon was not summoned; but Mr.Saltram's strength seemed very slow to return to him.

He could not sleep; he could only lie there listening to all the noises of the ship, the perpetual creaking and rattling, and tramping of footsteps above his head, and tortured by his impatience to be astir again.

He would not stand upon punctilio this time, he told himself; he would go straight to the door of Marian's cabin, and stand there until she came out to him.

Was she not his wife--his very own--powerless to hold him at bay in this manner?
His strength did not come back to him; that wakeful prostration in which the brain was always busy, while the aching body lay still, did not appear to be a curative process.

In the course of that third night of the voyage John Saltram was delirious, much to the alarm of his fellow-passenger, the single sharer of his cabin, a nervous elderly gentleman, who objected to his illness altogether as an outrage upon himself, and was indignantly desirous to know whether it was contagious.
So the doctor was brought to the sick man early next morning whether he would or not, and went through the usual investigations, and promised to administer the usual sedatives, and assured the anxious passenger that Mr.Saltram's complaint was in nowise infectious.
"He has evidently been suffering from serious illness lately, and has been over-exerting himself," said the doctor; "that seems very clear.