“What can you do for him, Doctor?”

“You see how I’m fixed; close onto two hundred men sick, and one doctor.  The medical supplies are wholly inadequate.  There’s not castor oil enough on this boat to keep the men clean inside.  I’m using my own drugs, but they won’t last through an epidemic like this.  I can’t do much for Lieutenant Fanning.  You can, though, if you’ll give him the time.  You can take better care of him right here than he could get in the hospital.  We haven’t an empty bed there.”

Claude found Victor Morse and told him he had better get a berth in one of the other staterooms.  When Victor left with his belongings, Fanning stared after him.  “Is he going?”

“Yes.  It’s too crowded in here, if you’ve got to stay in bed.”

“Glad of it.  His stories are too raw for me.  I’m no sissy, but that fellow’s a regular Don Quixote.”

Claude laughed.  “You mustn’t talk.  It makes you cough.”

“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