hat man made my life miserable. He had
done so well, and would have done so much more if he had had my
equipment, that I tried to see that he received all the credit due
him. But he would have none of the public receptions, and the audience
with the khedive, or any of the fuss they made over us. He only wanted
to get back to her. He spent the days on the quay watching them load
the steamer, and counting the hours until she was to sail; and even at
night he would leave the first bed he had slept in for six months, and
would come into my room and ask me if I would not sit up and talk with
him until daylight. You see, after he had given up all thought of her,
and believed himself about to die without seeing her again, it made
her all the dearer, I suppose, and made him all the more fearful of
losing her again.

"He became very quiet as soon as we were really under way, and Royce
and I hardly knew him for the same man. He would sit in silence in his
steamer-chair for hours, looking out at the sea and smiling to
himself, and sometimes, for he was still very weak and feverish, the
tears would come to his eyes and run down his cheeks. 'This is the
way we would sit,' he said to me one night, 'with the dark purple sky
and the strange Southern stars over our heads, and the rail of the
boat rising and sinking below the line of the horizon. And I can hear
her voice, and I try to imagine she is still sitting there, as she did
the last night out, when I held her hands between mine.'" Gordon
paused a moment, and then went on more slowly: "I do not know whether
it was that the excitement of the journey overland had kept him up or
not, but as we went on he became much weaker and slept more, until
Royce became anxious and alarmed about him. But he did not know it
himself; he had grown so sure of his recovery then that he did not
understand what the weakness meant. He fell off into long spells of
sleep or unconsciousness, and woke only to be fed, and would then fall
back to sleep again. And in one of these spells of unconsciousness he
died. He died within two days of land. He had no home and no country
and no family, as I told you, and we buried him at sea. He left
nothing behind him, for the very clothes he wore were those we had
given him--nothing but the locket and the chain which he had told me
to take from his neck when he died."

Gordon's voice had grown very cold and hard. He stopped and ran his
fingers down into his pocket and p