But as he balanced for the leap, a swift weakness and nausea swept over him, a weight seized upon his body and limbs.  He could not lift the lower foot from the iron rail, and he swayed dizzily and trembled.  He trembled.  He who had raced his men and beaten them up the hot hill to the trenches of San Juan.  But now he was a baby in the hands of a giant, who caught him by the wrist and with an iron arm clasped him around his waist and pulled him down, and shouted, brutally, “Help, some of youse, quick! he’s at it again.  I can’t hold him.”

More giants grasped him by the arms and by the legs.  One of them took the hand that clung to the stanchion in both of his, and pulled back the fingers one by one, saying, “Easy now, Lieutenant—­easy.”

The ragged palms and the sea and blockhouse were swallowed up in a black fog, and his body touched the canvas cot again with a sense of home-coming and relief and rest.  He wondered how he could have cared to escape from it.  He found it so good to be back again that for a long time he wept quite happily, until the fiery pillow was moist and cool.

The world outside of the iron bars was like a scene in a theatre set for some great event, but the actors were never ready.  He remembered confusedly a play he had once witnessed before that same scene.  Indeed, he believed he had played some small part in it; but he remembered it dimly, and all trace of the men who had appeared with him in it was gone.  He had reasoned it out that they were up there behind the range of mountains, because great heavy wagons and ambulances and cannon were emptied from the ships at the wharf above and were drawn away in long lines behind the ragged palms, moving always toward the passes between the peaks.  At times he was disturbed by the thought that he should be up and after them, that some tradition of duty made his presence with them imperative.  There was much to be done back of the mountains.  Some event of momentous import was being carried forward there, in which he held a part; but the doubt soon passed from him, and he was content to lie and watch the iron bars rising and falling between the block-house and the white surf.

If they had been only humanely kind, his lot would have been bearable, but they starved him and held him down when he wished to rise; and they would not put out the fire in the pillow, which they might easily have done by the simple expedient of throwing it over the ship’s side into the sea.  He himself had done this twice, but the keeper had immediately brought a fresh pillow already heated for the torture and forced it under his head.

His pleasures were very simple, and so few that he could not understand why they robbed him of them so jealously.  One was to watch a green cluster of bananas that hung above him from the awning, twirling on a string.  He could count as many of them as five before the bunch turned and swung lazily back again, when he could count as high as twelve; sometimes when the ship rolled heavily he could count to twenty.  It was a most fascinating game, and contented him for many hours.  But when they found this out they sent for the cook to come and cut them down, and the cook carried them away to his galley.