so, the silence--the brooding silence--ended; he heard the tumult of
traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that
is the shadow of our world--the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual
desire and the shadows of lost men--vanished clean away.

He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found.
And in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds, and of the dim
damp place in which he lay; in spite of the tears--wrung from him by
his physical distress--his heart was full of gladness to know that he
was nevertheless back once more in the kindly world of men.

THE LAZARETTE OF THE "HUNTRESS"

By W. CLARK RUSSELL

Copyright 1893 and 1894 by W. Clark Russell. Copyright 1895 by
Frederick A. Stokes Company.

I stepped into the Brunswick Hotel in the East India Docks for a glass
of ale. It was in the year 1853, and a wet, hot afternoon. I had been
on the tramp all day, making just three weeks of a wretched, hopeless
hunt after a situation on shipboard, and every bone in me ached with my
heart. My precious timbers, how poor I was! Two shillings, and
threepence--that was all the money I possessed in the wide world, and
when I had paid for the ale, I was poorer yet by twopence.

A number of nautical men of various grades were drinking at the bar. I
sat down in a corner to rest, and abandoned myself to the most dismal
reflections. I wanted to get out to Australia, and nobody, it seems,
was willing to ship me in any situation on any account whatever.
Captains and mates howled me off if I attempted to cross their
gangways. Nothing was to be got in the shipping yards. The very
crimps sneered at me when I told them that I wanted a berth. "Shake
your head, my hawbuck," said one of them, in the presence of a crowd of
grinning seamen, "that the Johns may see the hayseed fly."

What was I, do you ask? I'll tell you. I was one of ten children
whose father had been a clergyman, and the income "from all sources" of
that same clergyman had never exceeded L230 a year. I was a lumbering,
bulking lad, without friends, and, as I am now perfectly sensible,
without brains, without any kind of taste for any pursuit, execrating
the notion of clerkships, and perfectly willing to make away with
myself sooner than be glued to a three-legged stool. But enough of
this. The long and short is, I was thirsting to get out to Australia,
never doubting that I should easily make my fortune