“You seem sad, Mr. Becker.”

“Yes, Willis, I am almost distracted.”

“Still, you seem well enough; you are as hale and hearty as if you had just been keel-hauled and got a new rig.”

“It is not my body that is suffering, Willis; it is my mind.”

“Whatever is the matter?”

“Willis, my wife is dying.”

And so it was.  For a long period Becker’s wife had been a prey to racking pains, which, so to speak, she hid from herself, the better to conceal them from others, just as if suffering had been a crime.  After having resisted for fourteen years the afflictions of exile, long and perilous expeditions, nights passed under tents, humid winters and fierce burning summers, her health had, at length, succumbed, not all at once, like fabrics sapped by gunpowder, but little by little, like those that are demolished piecemeal with the pickaxe of the workman.  Day by day she grew more and more feeble, without those who were constantly by her side observing the insidious workings of disease.  Like Mucius Scaevola, who held his hands in a burning brazier without uttering a word, she so effectually hid her griefs within the recesses of her own bosom, that no one even suspected her illness.

“But, Mr. Becker,” said Willis, “I saw your wife this morning, and she seemed as well as usual.”

“Yes, seemed, Willis, that is true enough; not to give us pain, she has concealed her illness from us all.  It is only within the last twelve hours that I accidentally discovered that she has been long laboring under some fearful malady.”

“Do you know the nature of the disease?”

“No, that I have no means of ascertaining; it may be a distinct form of disease, or it may be a complication of disorders, which I know not.”

“It would not signify about the name if we only knew a remedy.”

“True; but I dread some malady of a cancerous type, which could not be eradicated without surgical skill.”

“I wish I had been born a doctor instead of a pilot,” sighed Willis.

“I cannot see her perish before my eyes.”

“Certainly not, Mr. Becker; it would never do to allow a ship to sink if she can be saved.”

“Well, what is to be done?”

“There lies the difficulty; had it been a question of anything that floats on the water, I might have suggested a remedy; but, in this case, I am fairly run aground.”

“I know too well what must be done, Willis.  In cases of ordinary maladies, with care and due precaution, proper nourishment and time, Nature will generally effect a cure.”

“Nature has no diploma, but she accomplishes more cures than those that have.”

“Unfortunately this is not a malady that can be cured by such means; and, unless its progress be checked in time, it may ultimately assume a form that will render a cure impossible.”

“Is death, then, inevitable?”