About a fortnight later, as the sky was darkening at the approach of therains, and the heat more heavily weighed over yellow Tonquin, Sylvestre brought to Hanoi, was sent to Ha-Long, and placed on board a hospital-ship about to return to France.

　　He had been carried about for some time on different stretchers, withintervals of rest at the ambulances. They had done all they could for him;but under the insufficient conditions, his chest had filled with water on thepierced side, and the gurgling air entered through the wound, which wouldnot close up.

　　He had received the military medal, which gave him a moment's joy.

　　But he was no longer the warrior of old--resolute of gait, and steady in hisresounding voice. All that had vanished before the long-suffering andweakening fever. He had become a home-sick boy again; he hardly spokeexcept in answering occasional questions, in a feeble and almost inaudiblevoice. To feel oneself so sick and so far away; to think that it wanted somany days before he could reach home! Would he ever live until then,with his strength ebbing away? Such a terrifying feeling of distancecontinually haunted him and weighed at every wakening; and when, aftera few hours' stupor, he awoke from the sickening pain of his wounds, withfeverish heat and the whistling sound in his pierced bosom, he imploredthem to put him on board, in spite of everything. He was very heavy tocarry into his ward, and without intending it, they gave him some crueljolts on the way.

　　They laid him on one of the iron camp bedsteads placed in rows,hospital fashion, and then he set out in an inverse direction, on his longjourney through the seas. Instead of living like a bird in the full wind ofthe tops, he remained below deck, in the midst of the bad air of medicines,wounds, and misery.

　　During the first days the joy of being homeward bound made him feela little better. He could even bear being propped up in bed with pillows,and at times he asked for his box. His seaman's chest was a deal box,bought in Paimpol, to keep all his loved treasures in; inside were lettersfrom Granny Yvonne, and also from Yann and Gaud, a copy-book intowhich he had copied some sea-songs, and one of the works of Confuciusin Chinese, caught up at random during pillage; on the blank sides of itsleaves he had written the simple account of his campaign.

　　Nevertheless he got no better, and after the first week, the doctorsdecided that death was imminent. They were near the Line now, in thestifling heat of storms. The troop-ship kept on her course, shaking her beds,the wounded and the dying; quicker and quicker she sped over the tossingsea, troubled still as during the sway of the monsoons.

　　Since leaving Ha-Long more than one patient died, and was consignedto the deep water on the high road to France; many of the narrow beds nolonger bore their suffering burdens.

　　Upon this particular day it was very gloomy in the travelling hospital;on account of the high seas it had been necessary to close the iron port-lids,which made the stifling sick-room more unbearable. Sylvestre was worse;the end was nigh. Lying always upon his wounded side, he pressed upon itwith both hands with all his remaining strength, to try and allay the waterydecomposition that rose in his right lung, and to breathe with the otherlung only. But by degrees the other was affected and the ultimate agonyhad begun.

　　Dreams and visions of home haunted his brain; in the hot darkness,beloved or horrible faces bent over him; he was in a never-endinghallucination, through which floated apparitions of Brittany and Iceland.

　　In the morning was called in the priest, and the old man, who was used tosee............