She saw nothing and heard nothing
but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over
her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she
was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea. There she lay,
sometimes seeing darkness, sometimes light, while every now and then
some one turned her over at the bottom of the sea.
After St. John had spent some hours in the heat of the sun wrangling
with evasive and very garrulous natives, he extracted the information
that there was a doctor, a French doctor, who was at present away on
a holiday in the hills. It was quite impossible, so they said, to find
him. With his experience of the country, St. John thought it unlikely
that a telegram would either be sent or received; but having reduced the
distance of the hill town, in which he was staying, from a hundred miles
to thirty miles, and having hired a carriage and horses, he started
at once to fetch the doctor himself. He succeeded in finding him, and
eventually forced the unwilling man to leave his young wife and return
forthwith. They reached the villa at midday on Tuesday.
Terence came out to receive them, and St. John was struck by the fact
that he had grown perceptibly thinner in the interval; he was white too;
his eyes looked strange. But the curt speech and the sulky masterful
manner of Dr. Lesage impressed them both favourably, although at the
same time it was obvious that he was very much annoyed at the whole
affair.
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