Then about four o’clock in the morning a light would gleam forward in the galley.  The unfailing Ransome with the uneasy heart, immune, serene, and active, was getting ready for the early coffee for the men.  Presently he would bring me a cup up on the poop, and it was then that I allowed myself to drop into my deck chair for a couple of hours of real sleep.  No doubt I must have been snatching short dozes when leaning against the rail for a moment in sheer exhaustion; but, honestly, I was not aware of them, except in the painful form of convulsive starts that seemed to come on me even while I walked.  From about five, however, until after seven I would sleep openly under the fading stars.

I would say to the helmsman:  “Call me at need,” and drop into that chair and close my eyes, feeling that there was no more sleep for me on earth.  And then I would know nothing till, some time between seven and eight, I would feel a touch on my shoulder and look up at Ransome’s face, with its faint, wistful smile and friendly, gray eyes, as though he were tenderly amused at my slumbers.  Occasionally the second mate would come up and relieve me at early coffee time.  But it didn’t really matter.  Generally it was a dead calm, or else faint airs so changing and fugitive that it really wasn’t worth while to touch a brace for them.  If the air steadied at all the seaman at the helm could be trusted for a warning shout:  “Ship’s all aback, sir!” which like a trumpet-call would make me spring a foot above the deck.  Those were the words which it seemed to me would have made me spring up from eternal sleep.  But this was not often.  I have never met since such breathless sunrises.  And if the second mate happened to be there (he had generally one day in three free of fever) I would find him sitting on the skylight half senseless, as it were, and with an idiotic gaze fastened on some object near by—­a rope, a cleat, a belaying pin, a ringbolt.

That young man was rather troublesome.  He remained cubbish in his sufferings.  He seemed to have become completely imbecile; and when the return of fever drove him to his cabin below, the next thing would be that we would miss him from there.  The first time it happened Ransome and I were very much alarmed.  We started a quiet search and ultimately Ransome discovered him curled up in the sail-locker, which opened into the lobby by a sliding door.  When remonstrated with, he muttered sulkily, “It’s cool in there.”  That wasn’t true.  It was only dark there.

The fundamental defects of his face were not improved by its uniform livid hue.  The disease disclosed its low type in a startling way.  It was not so with many of the men.  The wastage of ill-health seemed to idealise the general character of the features, bringing out the unsuspected nobility of some, the strength of others, and in one case revealing an essentially comic aspect.  He was a short, gingery, active man with a nose and chin of the Punch type, and whom his shipmates called “Frenchy.”  I don’t know why.  He may have been a Frenchman, but I have never heard him utter a single word in French.