rticulars; but he felt
that the beating of the two thousand horse-power engines--more or less--
was child's-play to the throbbing of his brain!

"And this," he thought, in the bitterness of his soul, "this is what I
have sacrificed home, friends, position, prospects in life for! This
is--soldiering!"

The merest shadow of the power to reason--if such a shadow had been
left--might have convinced him that that was _not_ soldiering; that, as
far as it went, it was not even sailoring!

"You're very bad, I fear," remarked a gentle voice at the side of his
hammock.

Miles looked round. It was good-natured, lanky, cadaverous Moses Pyne.

"Who told you I was bad?" asked Miles savagely, putting a wrong--but too
true--interpretation on the word.

"The colour of your cheeks tells me, poor fellow!"

"Bah!" exclaimed Miles. He was too sick to say more. He might have
said less with advantage.

"Shall I fetch you some soup?" asked Moses, in the kindness of his
heart. Moses, you see, was one of those lucky individuals who are born
with an incapacity to be sick at sea, and was utterly ignorant of the
cruelty he perpetrated. "Or some lobscouse?" he added.

"Go away!" gasped Miles.

"A basin of--"

Miles exploded, literally as well as metaphorically, and Moses retired.

"Strange," thought that healthy soldier, as he stalked away on further
errands of mercy, stooping as he went to avoid beams--"strange that
Miles is so changeable in character. I had come to think him a steady,
reliable sort of chap."

Puzzling over this difficulty, he advanced to the side of another
hammock, from which heavy groans were issuing.

"Are you very bad, corporal?" he asked in his usual tone of sympathy.

"Bad is it?" said Flynn. "Och! it's worse nor bad I am! Couldn't ye ax
the captin to heave-to for a--"

The suggestive influence of heaving-to was too much for Flynn. He
pulled up dead. After a few moments he groaned--

"Arrah! be off, Moses, av ye don't want my fist on yer nose."

"Extraordinary!" murmured the kindly man, as he removed to another
hammock, the occupant of which was differently constituted.

"Moses," he said, as the visitant approached.

"Yes, Gaspard," was the eager reply, "can I do anything for you?"

"Yes; if you'd go on deck, refresh yourself with a walk, and leave us
all alone, you'll con--fer--on--"

Gaspard ceased to speak; he had already spoken too much; and Moses Pyne,
still wondering, quietly took