Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/332

318 learned that he was a half-witted brother of the Chief Steward, a potato-peeler and dish-washer in the galley.

Four days after their interview with Mr. Micks, when they were at last near ing the end of the voyage, Doctor Trueman detained Claude after medical inspection to tell him that the Chief Steward had come down with the epidemic. “He sent for me last night and asked me to take his case,—won’t have anything to do with Chessup. I had to get Chessup’s permission. He seemed very glad to hand the case over to me.”

“Is he very bad?”

“He hasn’t a look-in, and he knows it. Complications; chronic Bright’s disease. It seems he has nine children. I’ll try to get him into a hospital when we make port, but he’ll only live a few days at most. I wonder who’ll get the shillings for all the eggs and oranges he hoarded away. Claude, my boy,” the doctor spoke with sudden energy, “if I ever set foot on land again, I’m going to forget this voyage like a bad dream. When I’m in normal health, I’m a Presbyterian, but just now I feel that even the wicked get worse than they deserve.”

A day came at last when Claude was wakened from sleep by a sense of stillness. He sprang up with a dazed fear that some one had died; but Fanning lay in his berth, breathing quietly.

Something caught his eye through the porthole,—a great grey shoulder of land standing up in the pink light of dawn, (powerful and strangely still after the distressing instability of the sea. Pale trees and long, low fortifications close grey buildings with red roofs  little sailboats bounding seaward  up on the cliff a gloomy fortress.