"I had a sense all the while, Roddy, that he was almost slipping through my fingers, and I fairly dug in my nails to hold him to life. On that point my conscience is clear, anyhow. No man ever had a doctor to battle harder for him, or a more devoted nurse. "Well, I pulled him through, and nursed him to convalescence. I thought I knew something of the peevishness of convalescents: but Farrell beat anything I had ever seen, or heard, or read of. By this time I was worn weak as a rat with night-watching and day-watching: but of this he made no account whatever. He started by using his greater weakness for strength, and he went on to dissemble his growing strength, hiding it, increasing it, still trading it as weakness upon my exhaustion. He came back to life with a permanent sneering smile, and a trick of wearing it for hours at a stretch as he leaned back on the cushions I had painfully made for him of plaited flax and stuffed with aromatic leaves, daily renewed. . . . Yes, Roddy, as a doctor I played full professional service on him, and piled it up with every extra kindness one castaway man could render another. . . . And the devil, as he recovered, lay watching me, under half-closed eyes, with never a sign of gratitude, but, for all my reward, this shifty sneer. "There came a day when his new insolence broke out with his old hate. 'You Foe,' said he, 'I reckon you're priding yourself on your bedside manner, eh? . . . I can't keep much account of time, lying here. But, when I get about again, I'll have things in this camp a bit more shipshape, I promise you. . . . I've been thinking it out, lying here: and my conclusion is, you're too much of the boss without doing your job. . . . How long is it since you've strolled up to the look-out?' "'About a fortnight,' said I. "'And that's a pretty sort of watch, eh?' he continued irritably: '--when you know that I never missed a day. . . . I tell you, Foe, that, after this, we'll have to come to a reckoning. One or other has to be master on this island, and it isn't going to be _you_! "I went up the hill obediently with the binoculars. I went up thoughtfully. . . ." "I came back some fifty minutes later, and said, 'You're too weak to walk; too weak even to crawl.' "'What's the use to tell me that?' he asked, still keeping his air of insolence. 'Drop your bedside manner, and present your report.'