Part 3 In The Shadow Chapter 2

　　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 toseeing sailors die, was astonished to find so pure a soul in so strong andmanly a body.

　　He cried out for air, air! but there was none anywhere; the ventilatorsno long gave any; the attendant, who was fanning him with a Chinese fan,only moved unhealthy vapours over him of sickening staleness, whichrevolted all lungs. Sometimes fierce, desperate fits came over him; hewished to tear himself away from that bed, where he felt death wouldcome to seize him, and rush above into the full fresh wind and try to liveagain. Oh! to be like those others, scrambling about among the rigging,and living among the masts. But his extreme effort only ended in thefeeble lifting of his weakened head; something like the incompletedmovement of a sleeper. He could not manage it, but fell back in the hollowof his crumpled bed, partly chained there by death; and each time, after thefatigue of a like shock, he lost all consciousness.

　　To please him they opened a port at last, although it was dangerous,the sea being very rough. It was going on for six in the evening. When thedisk was swung back, a red light entered, glorious and radiant. The dyingsun appeared upon the horizon in dazzling splendour, through a torn rift ina gloomy sky; its blinding light glanced over the waves, and lit up thefloating hospital, like a waving torch.

　　But no air rushed in; the little there was outside, was powerless toenter and drive before it the fevered atmosphere. Over all sides of thatboundless equatorial sea, floated a warm and heavy moisture, unfit forrespiration. No air on any side, not even for the poor gasping fellows ontheir deathbeds.

　　One vision disturbed him greatly; it was of his old grandmother,walking quickly along a road, with a heartrending look of alarm; fromlow-lying funereal clouds above her, fell the drizzling rain; she was on herway to Paimpol, summoned thither to be informed of his death.

　　He was struggling now, with the death-rattle in his throat. From thecorners of his mouth they sponged away the water and blood, which hadwelled up in quantities from his chest in writhing agony. Still the grand,glorious sun lit up all, like a conflagration of the whole world, with blood-laden clouds; through the aperture of the port-hole, a wide streak ofcrimson fire blazed in, and, spreading over Sylvestre's bed, formed a haloaround him.

　　At that very moment that same sun was to be seen in Brittany, wheremidday was about to strike. It was, indeed, the same sun, beheld at theprecise moment of its never-ending round; but here it kept quite anotherhue. Higher up in the bluish sky, it kept shedding a soft white light ongrandmother Yvonne, sitting out at her door, sewing.

　　In Iceland, too, where it was morning, it was shining at that samemoment of death. Much paler there, it seemed as if it only showed its faceby some miracle. Sadly it shed its rays over the fjord where /La Marie/floated; and now its sky was lit up by a pure northern light, which alwaysgives the idea of a frozen planet's reflection, without an atmosphere. With a cold accuracy, it outlined all the essentials of that stony chaos that isIceland; the whole of the country as seen from /La Marie/ seemed fixed inone same perspective and held upright. Yann was there, lit up by a strangelight, fishing, as usual, in the midst of this lunar-like scenery.

　　As the beam of fiery flame that came through the port-hole faded, andthe sun disappeared completely under the gilded billows, the eyes of thegrandson rolled inward toward his brow as if to fall back into his head.

　　They closed his eyelids with their own long lashes, and Sylvestrebecame calm and beautiful again, like a reclining marble statue of manlyrepose.