"Where's the Virginian?"
"Who, Bird?" Claude asked in astonishment,--Fanning had stood
beside him at Bird's funeral. "Oh, he's gone, too. You sleep if
you can."
After dinner Doctor Trueman came in and showed Claude how to give
his patient an alcohol bath. "It's simply a question of whether
you can keep up his strength. Don't try any of this greasy food
they serve here. Give him a raw egg beaten up in the juice of an
orange every two hours, night and day. Waken him out of his sleep
when it's time, don't miss a single two-hour period. I'll write
an order to your table steward, and you can beat the eggs up here
in your cabin. Now I must go to the hospital. It's wonderful what
those band boys are doing there. I begin to take some pride in
the place. That big German has been asking for you. He's in a
very bad way."
As there were no nurses on board, the Kansas band had taken over
the hospital. They had been trained for stretcher and first aid
work, and when they realized what was happening on the Anchises,
the bandmaster came to the Doctor and offered the services of his
men. He chose nurses and orderlies, divided them into night and
day shifts.
When Claude went to see his Corporal, big Tannhauser did not
recognize him. He was quite out of his head and was conversing
with his own family in the language of his early childhood. The
Kansas boys had singled him out for special attention. The mere
fact that he kept talking in a tongue forbidden on the surface of
the seas, made him seem more friendless and alone than the
others.
From the hospital Claude went down into the hold where
half-a-dozen of his company were lying ill. The hold was damp and
musty as an old cellar, so steeped in the smells and leakage of
innumerable dirty cargoes that it could not be made or kept
clean. There was almost no ventilation, and the air was fetid
with sickness and sweat and vomit. Two of the band boys were
working in the stench and dirt, helping the stewards. Claude
stayed to lend a hand until it was time to give Fanning his
nourishment. He began to see that the wrist watch, which he had
hitherto despised as effeminate and had carried in his pocket,
might be a very useful article. After he had made Fanning swallow
his egg, he piled all the available blankets on him and opened
the port to give the cabin an airing. While the fresh wind blew
in, he sat down on the edge of his berth and tried to collect his
wits. What had become of those first days of golden weather,
leisure and good-comradeship? The band concerts, the Lindsborg
Quartette, the first excitement and novelty of being at sea: all
that had gone by like a dream.
That night when the Doctor came in to see Fanning, he threw his
stethoscope on the bed and said wearily, "It's a wonder that
instrument doesn't take root in my ears and grow there." He sat
down and sucked his thermometer for a few minutes, then held it
out for inspection. Claude looked at it and told him he ought to
go to bed.
"Then who's to be up and around? No bed for me, tonight. But I
will have a hot bath by and by."
Claude asked why the ship's doctor didn't do anything and added
that he must be as little as he looked.
"Chessup? No, he's not half bad when you get to know him. He's
given me a lot of help about preparing medicines, and it's a
great assistance to talk the cases over with him. He'll do
anything for me except directly handle the patients. He doesn't
want to exceed his authority. It seems the English marine is very
particular about such things. He's a Canadian, and he graduated
first in his class at Edinburgh. I gather he was frozen out in
private practice. You see, his appearance is against him. It's an
awful handicap to look like a kid and be as shy as he is."
The Doctor rose, shored up his shoulders and took his bag.
"You're looking fine yourself, Lieutenant," he remarked.
"Parents both living? Were they quite young when you were born?
Well, then their parents were, probably. I'm a crank about that.
Yes, I'll get my bath pretty soon, and I will lie down for an
hour or two. With those splendid band boys running the hospital,
I get a little lee-way."
Claude wondered how the Doctor kept going. He knew he hadn't had
more than four hours sleep out of the last forty-eight, and he
was not a man of rugged constitution. His bath steward was, as he
said, his comfort. Hawkins was an old fellow who had held better
positions on better boats,--yes, in better times, too. He had
first gone to sea as a bath steward, and now, through the
fortunes of war, he had come back where he began,--not a good
place for an old man. His back was bent meekly, and he shuffled
along with broken arches. He looked after the comfort of all the
officers, and attended the doctor like a valet; got out his clean
linen, persuaded him to lie down and have a hot drink after his
bath, stood on guard at his door to take messages for him in the
short hours when he was resting. Hawkins had lost two sons in the
war and he seemed to find a solemn consolation in being of
service to soldiers. "Take it a bit easy now, sir. You'll 'ave it
'ard enough over there," he used to say to one and another.
At eleven o'clock one of the Kansas men came to tell Claude that
his Corporal was going fast. Big Tannhauser's fever had left him,
but so had everything else. He lay in a stupor. His congested
eyeballs were rolled back in his head and only the yellowish
whites were visible. His mouth was open and his tongue hung out
at one side. From the end of the corridor Claude had heard the
frightful sounds that came from his throat, sounds like violent
vomiting, or the choking rattle of a man in strangulation,--and,
indeed, he was being strangled. One of the band boys brought
Claude a camp chair, and said kindly, "He doesn't suffer. It's
mechanical now. He'd go easier if he hadn't so much vitality. The
Doctor says he may have a few moments of consciousness just at
the last, if you want to stay."
"I'll go down and give my private patient his egg, and then I'll
come back." Claude went away and returned, and sat dozing by the
bed. After three o'clock the noise of struggle ceased; instantly
the huge figure on the bed became again his good-natured
corporal. The mouth closed, the glassy jellies were once more
seeing, intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen,
brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was almost
unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked
up wistfully at his Lieutenant as if to ask him something. His
eyes filled with tears, and he turned his head away a little.
"Mein' arme Mutter!" he whispered distinctly.
A few moments later he died in perfect dignity, not struggling
under torture, but consciously, it seemed to Claude,--like a
brave boy giving back what was not his to keep.
Claude returned to his cabin, roused Fanning once more, and then
threw himself upon his tipping bunk. The boat seemed to wallow
and sprawl in the waves, as he had seen animals do on the farm
when they gave birth to young. How helpless the old vessel was
out here in the pounding seas, and how much misery she carried!
He lay looking up at the rusty water pipes and unpainted
joinings. This liner was in truth the "Old Anchises"; even the
carpenters who made her over for the service had not thought her
worth the trouble, and had done their worst by her. The new
partitions were hung to the joists by a few nails.
Big Tannhauser had been one of those who were most anxious to
sail. He used to grin and say, "France is the only climate that's
healthy for a man with a name like mine." He had waved his
good-bye to the image in the New York harbour with the rest,
believed in her like the rest. He only wanted to serve. It seemed
hard.
When Tannhauser first came to camp he was confused all the time,
and couldn't remember instructions. Claude had once stepped him
out in front of the line and reprimanded him for not knowing his
right side from his left. When he looked into the case, he found
that the fellow was not eating anything, that he was ill from
homesickness. He was one of those farmer boys who are afraid of
town. The giant baby of a long family, he had never slept away
from home a night in his life before he enlisted.
Corporal Tannhauser, along with four others, was buried at
sunrise. No band this time; the chaplain was ill, so one of the
young captains read the service. Claude stood by watching until
the sailors shot one sack, longer by half a foot than the other
four, into a lead-coloured chasm in the sea. There was not even a
splash. After breakfast one of the Kansas orderlies called him
into a little cabin where they had prepared the dead men for
burial. The Army regulations minutely defined what was to be done
with a deceased soldier's effects. His uniform, shoes, blankets,
arms, personal baggage, were all disposed of according to
instructions. But in each case there was a residue; the dead
man's toothbrushes, his razors, and the photographs he carried
upon his person. There they were in five pathetic little heaps;
what should be done with them?
Claude took up the photographs that had belonged to his corporal;
one was a fat, foolish-looking girl in a white dress that was too
tight for her, and a floppy hat, a little flag pinned on her
plump bosom. The other was an old woman, seated, her hands
crossed in her lap. Her thin hair was drawn back tight from a
hard, angular face--unmistakably an Old-World face--and her eyes
squinted at the camera. She looked honest and stubborn and
unconvinced, he thought, as if she did not in the least
understand.
"I'll take these," he said. "And the others--just pitch them
over, don't you think?"