She conveyed the man’s request to the surgeon, who nodded with pursed lips. “I believe we may be able to accommodate him,” he said. “Thank you. You are dismissed.”
Before she left the cockpit, she paused briefly at the captain’s hammock. Though he did not seem to be in quite such bad shape as the French prisoner, he still lay pale and sweating and insensible. “Come back to us,” she whispered.
He made no response.
*
Two hours later, one last corpse was set adrift, with acting captain Richardson muttering in Irish-accented Latin as it went over the gunwale.
As Arabella watched the fitfully burning bundle of rags float away toward the sun, she realized she had never even learned the Frenchman’s name.
*
It was nearly a week—a week filled with the hard work of chopping and hauling and scraping and painting to bring the ship back to some semblance of her previous condition—before Arabella saw the captain again. Still under the surgeon’s care, he had been moved from the cockpit to his own cabin.
Withers laid a weary arm across Arabella’s shoulders before she was allowed to enter the cabin. “I’ve brought him up here in hopes that the air and light, along with the familiar surroundings, will help him recover himself. But he’s not sensible, and requires constant care. As you are the captain’s boy, I will be relying on you to help minister to his needs, and you must report to me immediately upon any change in his condition. Any change whatsoever, d’ye understand?”
Arabella nodded, not trusting her voice. Imagining the captain lying injured and insensible made hot salt tears pinch the corners of her eyes and the back of her throat, and she feared that any attempt to speak would instead bring forth nothing but a gush of sobs.
They entered the cabin. Half the great window had been smashed in the battle, the shattered panes now covered with rough planking, and the space was still disordered and stank of smoke. Aadim sat in his accustomed position to one side, face and clothing besmirched with soot but otherwise apparently unharmed. And in the middle, sprawled in his hammock, lay the long dark body of Captain Singh.
His head was tightly wrapped in a bandage, blood seeping through at his left temple. The face visible below that bandage seemed racked with pain, or perhaps merely bad dreams, and twitched at irregular intervals. His whole body, in fact, twitched and spasmed frequently, explaining the disordered state of his bed-clothes.
Every twitch seemed to tug at her heart. To see this fine, brave man reduced to so miserable a state raised such strong emotions in her breast that she could barely breathe. She knew at once that if there were any task she could carry out, any thing at all she might do which would aid his recovery, she would perform it unhesitatingly.
She had not, until that moment, realized just how deeply this man had fixed himself in her sentiments.
“The motion is a positive sign,” the surgeon explained, breaking into Arabella’s brooding abstraction. “It indicates that all the connections between his brain and limbs are intact, awaiting only the return of consciousness. Until that occurs, you must keep him lightly covered, so that he remains cool but not chilled. Here is a sponge; you must squeeze a little water onto his lips every half an hour. Mark that he licks it off and swallows it, and take care that he not breathe it in.” He gave her further guidance as to the care of his bandages and other needs, and adjured her again to summon him immediately upon any change in the captain’s condition.
“H-how long,” Arabella managed to stammer out, “will he be like this?”
The surgeon gave a small sigh. “The Lord alone knows.” He then excused himself to tend to his other patients, promising to return before the end of the watch.
*
After the surgeon left, Arabella stared into the captain’s face—the dark, piercing eyes now hidden behind trembling lids—and gently stroked the sweating brow beneath his bandages. “You will recover your senses,” she whispered reassuringly. “You will.”
After one last glance at her unconscious captain, she busied herself in tidying up the cabin. Hundreds of tiny bits of glass still floated in the corners, and had to be swept from the air with a damp washing-leather. Even as she worked, though, she could not stop her eyes from straying to the captain as he lay insensible in his hammock. But though he still twitched and thrashed at intervals, he seemed neither better nor worse off.
She did notice that a lock of his hair had dislodged itself from under his bandage and now rested against his closed eyelid. Perhaps it tickled, causing at least some of his restless motion. Tenderly she brushed the lock aside and tucked it back under the bandage.
And then came a sound—a brief whirring of gears, somewhat reminiscent of the clearing of a throat—that made her look up.