stood with uncovered heads. The Kansas band played a solemn
march, the Swedish quartette sang a hymn. Many a man turned his
face away when that brown sack was lowered into the cold, leaping
indigo ridges that seemed so destitute of anything friendly to
human kind. In a moment it was done, and they steamed on without
him.

The glittering walls of water kept rolling in, indigo, purple,
more brilliant than on the days of mild weather. The blinding
sunlight did not temper the cold, which cut the face and made the
lungs ache. Landsmen began to have that miserable sense of being
where they were never meant to be. The boys lay in heaps on the
deck, trying to keep warm by hugging each other close. Everybody
was seasick. Fanning went to bed with his clothes on, so sick he
couldn't take off his boots. Claude lay in the crowded stern, too
cold, too faint to move. The sun poured over them like flame,
without any comfort in it. The strong, curling, foam-crested
waves threw off the light like millions of mirrors, and their
colour was almost more than the eye could bear. The water seemed
denser than before, heavy like melted glass, and the foam on the
edges of each blue ridge looked sharp as crystals. If a man
should fall into them, he would be cut to pieces.

The whole ocean seemed suddenly to have come to life, the waves
had a malignant, graceful, muscular energy, were animated by a
kind of mocking cruelty. Only a few hours ago a gentle boy had
been thrown into that freezing water and forgotten. Yes, already
forgotten; every one had his own miseries to think about.

Late in the afternoon the wind fell, and there was a sinister
sunset. Across the red west a small, ragged black cloud
hurried,--then another, and another. They came up out of the
sea,--wild, witchlike shapes that travelled fast and met in the
west as if summoned for an evil conclave. They hung there against
the afterglow, distinct black shapes, drawing together, devising
something. The few men who were left on deck felt that no good
could come out of a sky like that. They wished they were at home,
in France, anywhere but here.

VI

The next morning Doctor Trueman asked Claude to help him at sick
call. "I've got a bunch of sergeants taking temperatures, but
it's too much for one man to oversee. I don't want to ask
anything of those dude officers who sit in there playing poker
all the time. Either they've got no conscience, or they're not
awake to the gravit