n board a
hospital-ship about to return to France.

He had been carried about for some time on different stretchers, with
intervals of rest at the ambulances. They had done all they could for
him; but under the insufficient conditions, his chest had filled with
water on the pierced side, and the gurgling air entered through the
wound, which would not close up.

He had received the military medal, which gave him a moment's joy. But
he was no longer the warrior of old--resolute of gait, and steady in his
resounding voice. All that had vanished before the long-suffering and
weakening fever. He had become a home-sick boy again; he hardly spoke
except in answering occasional questions, in a feeble and almost
inaudible voice. To feel oneself so sick and so far away; to think that
it wanted so many days before he could reach home! Would he ever live
until then, with his strength ebbing away? Such a terrifying feeling
of distance continually haunted him and weighed at every wakening; and
when, after a few hours' stupor, he awoke from the sickening pain of his
wounds, with feverish heat and the whistling sound in his pierced bosom,
he implored them to put him on board, in spite of everything. He was
very heavy to carry into his ward, and without intending it, they gave
him some cruel jolts on the way.

They laid him on one of the iron camp bedsteads placed in rows, hospital
fashion, and then he set out in an inverse direction, on his long
journey through the seas. Instead of living like a bird in the full
wind of the tops, he remained below deck, in the midst of the bad air of
medicines, wounds, and misery.

During the first days the joy of being homeward bound made him feel a
little better. He could even bear being propped up in bed with pillows,
and at times he asked for his box. His seaman's chest was a deal box,
bought in Paimpol, to keep all his loved treasures in; inside were
letters from Granny Yvonne, and also from Yann and Gaud, a copy-book
into which he had copied some sea-songs, and one of the works of
Confucius in Chinese, caught up at random during pillage; on the blank
sides of its leaves he had written the simple account of his campaign.

Nevertheless he got no better, and after the first week, the doctors
decided that death was imminent. They were near the Line now, in the
stifling heat of storms. The troop-ship kept on her course, shaking her
beds, the wounded and the dying; quicker and quicker she sped ove