ey.

Four day after their interview with Mr. Micks, when they were at
last nearing the end of the voyage, Doctor Trueman detained
Claude after medical inspection to tell him that the Chief
Steward had come down with the epidemic. "He sent for me last
night and asked me to take his case,--won't have anything to do
with Chessup. I had to get Chessup's permission. He seemed very
glad to hand the case over to me."

"Is he very bad?"

"He hasn't a look-in, and he knows it. Complications; chronic
Bright's disease. It seems he has nine children. I'll try to get
him into a hospital when we make port, but he'll only live a few
days at most. I wonder who'll get the shillings for all the eggs
and oranges he hoarded away. Claude, my boy," the doctor spoke
with sudden energy, "if I ever set foot on land again, I'm going
to forget this voyage like a bad dream. When I'm in normal
health, I'm a Presbyterian, but just now I feel that even the
wicked get worse than they deserve."

A day came at last when Claude was wakened from sleep by a sense
of stillness. He sprang up with a dazed fear that some one had
died; but Fanning lay in his berth, breathing quietly.

Something caught his eye through the porthole,--a great grey
shoulder of land standing up in the pink light of dawn, powerful
and strangely still after the distressing instability of the sea.
Pale trees and long, low fortifications... close grey
buildings with red roofs... little sailboats bounding seaward...
up on the cliff a gloomy fortress.

He had always thought of his destination as a country shattered
and desolated,--"bleeding France"; but he had never seen anything
that looked so strong, so self-sufficient, so fixed from the
first foundation, as the coast that rose before him. It was like
a pillar of eternity. The ocean lay submissive at its feet, and
over it was the great meekness of early morning.

This grey wall, unshaken, mighty, was the end of the long
preparation, as it was the end of the sea. It was the reason for
everything that had happened in his life for the last fifteen
months. It was the reason why Tannhauser and the gentle
Virginian, and so many others who had set out with him, were
never to have any life at all, or even a soldier's death. They
were merely waste in a great enterprise, thrown overboard like
rotten ropes. For them this kind release,--trees and a still
shore and quiet water,--was never, never to be. How long would
their bodies toss, h