Pordage, she still
wore the nightcap, and she now had cut all the ladies on account of her
not having been formally and separately rescued by Captain Carton before
anybody else. The end of Mr. Pordage, to bring to an end all I know
about him, was, that he got great compliments at home for his conduct on
these trying occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, a Governor
and a K.C.B.
Sergeant Drooce had fallen from a high fever into a low one. Tom
Packer--the only man who could have pulled the Sergeant through it--kept
hospital aboard the old raft, and Mrs. Belltott, as brisk as ever again
(but the spirit of that little woman, when things tried it, was not equal
to appearances), was head-nurse under his directions. Before we got down
to the Mosquito coast, the joke had been made by one of our men, that we
should see her gazetted Mrs. Tom Packer, _vice_ Belltott exchanged.
When we reached the coast, we got native boats as substitutes for the
rafts; and we rowed along under the land; and in that beautiful climate,
and upon that beautiful water, the blooming days were like enchantment.
Ah! They were running away, faster than any sea or river, and there was
no tide to bring them back.
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