red forth
on her errand of mercy alone. The fisherman's old boat still lay rocking
in the cove, and the oars stood in the shed: Louie knew how to use them
well, and making her preparations by daylight, and leaving the rest till
nightfall, lest she should be hindered by the authorities, she found means
to impress the little cow-boy into her service; and after dark a keg of
sweet water was trundled down and stored amidships of the boat, with an
enormous block of ice rolled in an old blanket; a basket of lemons and
oranges was added, a roll of fresh bed-linen, a little box of such
medicines as her last year's practice had taught her might be of use; and
extorting a promise from the boy that he would leave another block of ice
on the bank every night after dark for her to come and fetch, Louie
quickly stepped into the boat, lifted the oars, and slipt away into the
darkness of the great and quiet river.

When, three days afterward, Captain Traverse unclosed his eyes from a
dream of Gehenna and the place the smoke of whose torment goes up for
ever, a strange confusion crept like a haze across his mind, tired out and
tortured with delirium, and he dropped the aching lids and fell away into
slumber again; for he had thought himself vexed with the creak of cordage
and noise of feet, stived in his dark and narrow cabin, on a filthy bed in
a foul air, if any air at all were in that noisome place, reeking with
heat and the ferment of bilge-water and fever-smell; and here, unless a
new delirium chained him, a mattress lay upon the deck with the awning of
an old sail stretched above it and making soft shadow out of searching
sun, a gentle wind was blowing over him, a land-breeze full of sweet
scents from the gardens on the shore, from the meadows and the marshes.
Silence broken only by a soft wash of water surrounded him; a flake of ice
lay between his lips, that had lately been parched and withering, and
delicious coolness swathed his head, that had seemed to be a ball of
burning fire. The last that he remembered had been a hot, dry, aching
agony, and this was bliss: the sleep into which he fell when waking from
the stupor that had benumbed his power of suffering--a power that had
rioted till no more could be suffered--lasted during all the spell of that
fervid noon sun that hung above the harbor and the town like the unbroken
seal of the expected pestilence. A strange still town, fear and heat
keeping its streets deserted, its peopl