Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/139

 thing; swim as best he could to keep the cramps from his muscles, breathe when he might and die hard.

His mind was unnaturally active. Thoughts flew through his brain at lightning speed. He recalled a thousand incidents, visioned them swiftly and distinctly and passed them on. He wondered about his father, and sobbed once and felt terribly alone and weak. He remembered what he had set out to do a few short months before, and the war which had taken so much of his thought vanished to a mere pin-point of unimportance. Even a world war seemed a puny, silly thing here in this universe of blackness and storm. It would go on to its end, whatever that end might be, and after an interval everything would be the same as before. Flowers would spring up over a million graves and a new generation would run the plowshares across them, and the world would go on and on endlessly. It was strange and puzzling. He would not be there and no one would know or care. His life was just one tiny drop in a great ocean, and of no more importance. He wondered why. …

"Troy, Nelson A., seaman, lost overboard from U. S. S. Gyandotte; uncle, Peter Troy, Wonson, Me." That's the way the papers would have it. 114