"Now listen; you're not to speak; you're not to ask questions;
you're not to open your mouth. You've just to come--that's all."
He took the little man and hurried him ashore. He was breathless;
but he ran Captain Barker over the gang-plank like a charging bull.
"One moment, Jemmy--Jemmy! Damme I _will_ ask--!"
"Ask away, then--and wait for the answer!"
And so it happened that Tristram, stretched in the hospital at
Sheerness, with his head to the wall, and thirty wounded men on
either side of him, heard in his painless dose a sharp cry, and then
a voice that seemed to call him across miles of empty space.
"O! my dear God! Tristram--my son, my son!"
He opened his eyes feebly, smiled, and whispering one word--"Dad!"--
sank back into a dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER XV.
BACK AT THE BLUE PAVILIONS.
Four weeks afterwards Tristram was put into a boat and taken up to
London, whence after two days' rest he was removed by easy stages
home to Harwich.
At the gate of Captain Barker's pavilion he passed into the care of
Dr. Beckerleg, who put him to bed at once and dared him to get up.
As he was borne up the garden-path Sophia peeped through a chink of
the little blue door; and got not another glimpse of her lover for
another six weeks.
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