Early in the engagement
he was carried below, badly torn by a severe and dangerous splinter
wound in the head.
"There goes poor Watty--out of his trouble, anyhow," cried one of the
three friends.
Thereafter, the life in him hovered long 'twixt this world and the next,
and weeks passed ere, in the house of a friend at Kingston, Jamaica, he
came once more to his full senses. Even then his progress was but
dilatory.
"I can't make the boy out," said his doctor. "He _ought_ to get well
now. Yet he doesn't. Doesn't seem to make an effort, somehow. If he was
a bit older you'd think he didn't _want_ to live. It's not natural. If
he were to get any little complication now, he'd go."
And so the listless weeks dragged on, and it was but a ghost of the once
merry boy that each morning crept wearily and with infinite labour from
his room to the wide, pleasant verandah. And there he would pass his
days, vacantly listening with dull ears to the cool sea-breeze
whispering through the trees, or brooding over his misery. Sometimes, in
his weak state, tears of self-pity would roll unheeded down his cheeks;
he pined for the heather of his native hills, for the murmur of Tweed
and Teviot, and for the faces of his own people. Never again could the
happiness be his to live once more in the dearly loved Border land; for
how could he face home when that terrible fate awaited his landing at
Portsmouth.
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