"OUT, BRIEF CANDLE!"
About a fortnight later, as the sky was darkening at the approach of the rains, 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, with intervals 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 the pierced side, and the gurgling air entered through the wound, which would not 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 his resounding voice. All that had vanished before the long-suffering and weakening fever. He had become a home-sick boy again; he hardly spoke except in answering occasional questions, in a feeble and almost inaudible voice. To feel oneself so sick and so far away; to think that it wanted so many days before he could reach home! Would he ever live until then, with his strength ebbing away? Such a terrifying feeling of distance continually haunted him and weighed at every wakening; and when, after a few hours' stupor, he awoke from the sickening pain of his wounds, with feverish heat and the whistling sound in his pierced bosom, he implored them to put him on board, in spite of everything. He was very heavy to carry into his ward, and without intending it, they gave him some cruel jolts 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 long journey through the seas. Instead of living like a bird in the full wind of the 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 feel a 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 letters from Granny Yvonne, and also from Yann and Gaud, a copy-book into which he had copied some sea-songs, and one of the works of Confucius in Chinese, caught up at random during pillage; on the blank sides of its leaves he had written the simple account of his campaign.
Nevertheless he got no better, and after the first week, the doctors decided that death was imminent. They were near the Line now, in the stifling 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 tossing sea, troubled still as during the sway of the monsoons.
Since leaving Ha-Long more than one patient died, and was consigned to the deep water on the high road to France; many of the narrow beds no longer 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 it with both hands with all his remaining strength, to try and allay the watery decomposition that rose in his right lung, and to breathe with the other lung only. But by degrees the other was affected and the ultimate agony had begun.
