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Chapter 12: Narrative Continued By the Doctor—We Have No Advantages
I had a great deal to worry about as the evening wore on. My nerves were indeed on their last legs, and as the sun slid at last behind the horizon, so too did my optimism for our cause.
There was very little to eat in the Bio Electronic Navigator's home; such accommodations were useless to the little machine, since few robots eat; however, Jim and I were soon aware of its absence, and practiced a little scrounging vainly for anything edible. It was also a misery that we had no water, not only for our consumption, but for other necessary purposes as well. I had noticed that the Captain, lying as quietly and resiliently as she could, had shown signs of disorientation before, as well as bouts of restless sleeps, followed by periods of heavy slumber. I had done my best to keep an eye out for her as much as I could, but with practically nothing to nurse her injury with, I could not prevent her fever for long.
Nevertheless, when it came I did all I could for her: I encouraged her to sleep, I sat with her, I spoke with her, and I often felt her forehead to check her temperature; not that I could necessarily differentiate between high and low fever—I simply remembered Sarah, my good friend and Jim's mother, telling me of the procedure once or twice when Jim had fallen ill, and I wanted to try everything I could think of to help the Captain. At one point, when her fever was evidently very high, she began lightly to perspire while she slept, and, dabbing the droplets from her forehead, I lamented over the fact we had no water to cool her fever with. Jim suggested that we throw open her coat, and I did, and the perspiration slowly went away. We left her coat undone.
As for ammunition, we were running somewhat low. The supply the Captain had been able to carry off the ship had been a sparse amount, for we had had no time to prepare, and were just lucky to escape with our lives. I feared the worst. The pirates knew our location—they had made camp not a mile from it—and could at any moment come in and take charge. The fact that we were feigning possession of the map only spread the icing upon our cake of troubles, for if the pirates were to take charge and discover that we were living off a lie, they would inevitably have our heads upon their wall.
We had no advantage. We were outnumbered, out of shot, and out of options. We had nothing but the still burning determination of Jim, who wanted with all his heart to retrieve the map, which he felt would then bestow upon us the ultimate advantage.
"Maybe I could get out and back to the ship when it's really late at night," he might devise.
"More than likely they'll have sentries waiting," I would discourage.
"It'd be dark. They wouldn't be able to see me," he might argue.
"They'll have a fire going; they'll see you," I would predict.
And Jim would sit and devise other plans: perhaps we could sneak up and take the sentries, perhaps we could use B.E.N. as a diversion, or perhaps we could sneak up and put out their fire so they couldn't see; all of which I considered and then fretted as being too dangerous.
"Well, we gotta do something, Doc. We can't just sit here."
The evening turned at last to night, and the Captain's condition steadily grew worse. She would awaken at times with a start, and not know where she was. Her fever increased, and she suffered troubling nightmares, often waking soon afterwards disoriented or confused. I would come to her when I would discover that she was awake, and try to soothe her as best I could, reassuring her that things were all right, reminding her of where she was, and sitting beside her until she fell asleep again. She sometimes asked me where Mr. Arrow was, to which I would reply that he was all right, too. But there were other times when she wanted nothing to do with me, thinking herself somewhere else and wishing she could get some work done without interruption. She would then fall back to sleep.
Although on occasion she hadn't the faintest notion of where she was, or lay thinking that she was somewhere else, she could very easily recognize me, and usually Jim, in any given situation, which heartened me. My worry for her was very great, and I don't know what I would have done had she been so disoriented she did not know who I was. I attempted to make her as comfortable as possible, even if that meant intruding upon her personal boundaries and moving her arms out of the long sleeves of her jacket to keep her cool. She was sedately passive to my touch and my aid, which she had shown only vague hints of for over most of the course of the afternoon, and so I took this to my advantage and spent a good part of the night caring for her.
Sometimes when I sat with her she would speak to me, which I tried gently to discourage, feeling that she and I both had enough on our plates without a punctured lung. Nevertheless, she would talk very quietly to me, sometimes in a disoriented, almost nonsensical way, but oftentimes very seriously.
"Doctor, listen to me," she told me earnestly once in a nearly inaudible whisper, as if she were disclosing a vital secret to me, "the map is the longboat bay, in the coil of line on the catwalk. If you should need it, I want to make sure you know it is there. You will remember?"
I promised her I would.
"You know, I'm terribly worried about you, Doctor," she went on after a pause, quite sincerely concerned. "…Mr. Hawkins… as well, but moreover you… you're such an invalid in…situations like this. I don't want you to get hurt…"
I brushed a lock of hair from her face and grinned confidently to assure her, stating, "You needn't worry about me, Captain… just rest. And don't speak. It isn't necessary."
When she asked me if I would remain beside her, I complied, and she fell asleep quickly after that, and didn't wake again for a long time.
Jim had been standing restlessly by the door. We could see from where we were that the pirates did indeed have a fire going, but Jim could not make out whether a sentry had been assigned or not. I warned him decidedly not to risk it, and it surprised me a little when he obeyed. But despite his obedience in staying in B.E.N's lodge, he stood agitatedly by the door and mumbled, trying still to piece together a plan of attack.
I sat beside the Captain, who had now slept motionless for nearly two hours after her last discourse with me, and I was beginning to worry. During the first thirty or forty minutes of those hours she had perspired and fidgeted, murmuring in her sleep and wincing in discomfort. I could think of nothing new to do for her except move her down a little closer to the door for fresh air, where about thirty minutes later her fever broke and she slept deeply.
She now was almost unmoving, and I was desperately anticipating when she might wake up again. She had not slept straight through so long a time once before during this night, and even though I kept telling myself that 'no news is good news', there was a growing worry that maybe this was, in truth, bad news.
Jim was mumbling rather sarcastically about us digging a tunnel through the floor and out to safety with an assorted, useless supply of rusty spoons B.E.N had, when I threw up my hands and declared, "It's hopeless!"
"I was only kidding, Doc, we can't dig through that metal floor—"
"Not that," I shook my head rigorously, "Her! She's never waking up again! I failed! I can't believe it! I actually let her—"
I was jumping to outlandish conclusions, and Jim leaned over me to look at the Captain skeptically. "Doc," Jim tapped me on the shoulder, "Check it out, Doc… she's still breathing."
I did look down to see her chest rise and fall with shallow breaths, and petitioned Heaven, crouching on all fours and placing my hand upon her forehead. "How's her temperature, Doc?" Jim inquired, straightening.
"I don't know! I can't tell!" I said ecstatically. "But she's still with us!"
Jim turned back to the door. "She broke her fever, right?"
"I believe so," I replied, rocking back upon my knees and cleaning my glasses. "Good," Jim remarked. "Maybe when she wakes up she can help figure out how to get out of this mess."
But, when the Captain did actually wake up (after another good hour), she was, to the contrary, quite inarticulate. She lay there quite in control of herself again, saying nothing as arbitrary as she had previously during the night, and rather seeming to sort thoughts and urgencies in her mind. When she tried to speak, she would sometimes tangle up her thoughts and give up the sentence; also I noticed that she was having growing difficulty speaking because her breathing had not improved as much as necessary, and so oftentimes it would not be her entangled thoughts that made her give up, but the pain in her side when she breathed to speak.
Nevertheless, she was awake and coherent, which encouraged Jim and me to believe the Captain was making her way towards recovery. This was heartening, but did little to renew our spirits fully. Jim slowly sank into the conclusion that maybe there really wasn't any way of getting the map, and that in the morning we'd all be Silver's captives. Our own resignation was bitter to taste, and the worst defeat of its kind: we had given up, defeated ourselves before Silver got the chance. This was, perhaps, even worse than the idea of Silver taking us in the morning. His triumph meant little compared to the position we were assuming; we who were already resigned to our fate.