It was the hour for receptions, when everybody who had any business at the department came to look after his interests; and the anteroom was filled with officers of every grade, some in uniform, others in citizen’s dress.

The conversation was very animated; for Daniel heard the sounds from the outer passage.

He entered; and there was silence,—­sudden, deep, chilling silence.

Evidently they had been talking about him.

Even if he could have doubted it for a moment, he read it in the faces turned aside, the forced smiles, and the cautious glances with which he was received.  He thought, very much troubled,—­

“What can this mean?”

In the meantime a young man in citizen’s dress, whom he did not know, called out from one side of the room to the other, to an old officer in a seedy uniform, with blackened epaulets (a real sea-dog), lean, bronzed, wrinkled, and with eyes bearing the traces of recent ophthalmy,—­

“Why do you stop, lieutenant?  We were much interested, I assure you.”

The lieutenant seemed to hesitate, as if he were making up his mind to do a disagreeable thing, which still did not depend on his choice; and then he resumed his account,—­

“Well, we got there, convinced that we had taken all the necessary precautions, and that there was, consequently, nothing to fear,—­fine precautions they turned out to be!  In the course of a week the whole crew was laid up; and as to the staff, little Bertram and I were the only officers able to appear on deck.  Moreover, my eyes were in a state.  You see what they say now.  The captain was the first to die; the same evening five sailors followed suit, and seven the next day; the day after the first lieutenant and two of the noncommissioned officers.  The like was never seen before.”

Daniel turned to his neighbor.

“Who is that officer?” he asked.

“Lieut.  Dutac of ‘The Valorous,’ just returned from Cochin China.”

Light broke upon Daniel’s mind; it was a painful light.

“When did ‘The Valorous’ come in?” he asked again.

“Six days ago she made the harbor of Brest.”

The other man went on,—­

“And thus, you see, we left a goodly portion of our crew out there.  That is a campaign!  As to my own notions, this is what I think,—­a nasty country, a wretched climate, a people fit for the gallows.”

“Certainly,” said the young man in citizen’s dress, “things are not pleasant in Cochin China.”

“Ah, but still”—­

“What if you were ordered back?”

“I would go, of course.  Somebody must go, you know, and carry reinforcements there; but I should not care if somebody else”—­

He shrugged his shoulders, and said stoically,—­

“And besides, since we navy men must be eaten by the fish some time or other, it does not matter very much when that takes place.”