. .' That, or something like that, is the way it would go.
"I had a sense all the while, Roddy, that he was almost slipping
through my fingers, and I fairly dug in my nails to hold him to life.
On that point my conscience is clear, anyhow. No man ever had a
doctor to battle harder for him, or a more devoted nurse.
"Well, I pulled him through, and nursed him to convalescence.
I thought I knew something of the peevishness of convalescents: but
Farrell beat anything I had ever seen, or heard, or read of. By this
time I was worn weak as a rat with night-watching and day-watching:
but of this he made no account whatever. He started by using his
greater weakness for strength, and he went on to dissemble his
growing strength, hiding it, increasing it, still trading it as
weakness upon my exhaustion. He came back to life with a permanent
sneering smile, and a trick of wearing it for hours at a stretch as
he leaned back on the cushions I had painfully made for him of
plaited flax and stuffed with aromatic leaves, daily renewed. . . .
Yes, Roddy, as a doctor I played full professional service on him,
and piled it up with every extra kindness one castaway man could
render another.
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