"You see, Doctor," he said, briskly, "that you can't kill me. I can't
die. I've got to live, you understand. Because, sir, she said she would
come. She said if I was wounded, or if I was ill, she would come to me.
She didn't care what people thought. She would come any way and nurse
me--well, she will come.

"So, Doctor--old man--" He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and stroked
his hand eagerly, "old man--" he began again, beseechingly, "you'll
not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I won't die.
Nothing made by man can kill me. No, not until she comes. Then, after
that--eight days, she'll be here soon, any moment? What? You think so,
too? Don't you? Surely, yes, any moment. Yes, I'll go to sleep now, and
when you see her rowing out from shore you wake me. You'll know her; you
can't make a mistake. She is like--no, there is no one like her--but you
can't make a mistake."

That day strange figures began to mount the sides of the ship, and to
occupy its every turn and angle of space. Some of them fell on their
knees and slapped the bare deck with their hands, and laughed and
cried out, "Thank God, I'll see God's country again!" Some of them
were regulars, bound in bandages; some were volunteers, dirty and
hollow-eyed, with long beards on boys' faces. Some came on crutches;
others with their arms around the shoulders of their comrades, staring
ahead of them with a fixed smile, their lips drawn back and their teeth
protruding. At every second step they stumbled, and the face of each was
swept by swift ripples of pain.

They lay on cots so close together that the nurses could not walk
between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and along the
transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging to
a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship's bow be turned
toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a state of
self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from which hunger
nor nausea nor aching bones could shake them.

The hospital steward touched the Lieutenant lightly on the shoulder.

"We are going North, sir," he said. "The transport's ordered North to
New York, with these volunteers and the sick and wounded. Do you hear
me, sir?"

The Lieutenant opened his eyes. "Has she come?" he asked.

"Gee!" exclaimed the hospital steward. He glanced impatiently at the
blue mountains and the yellow coast, from which the transport was
drawing rap