"It didn't work," said Mackenzie. "If you'll listen to the lungs you'll know why—pneumonia."
"You'd better go and rest a bit. I'll stay—I won't leave him," said Clarke, blinking at the light and wondering at the quietness of his own voice.
Mackenzie looked hard at the flickering night lamp.
"No," he said slowly. "I guess not."
After Clarke had gone back to their room, the surgeon riveted his eyes on Trevelyan's sunken face, and once he put his hand out quickly and pressed it over the bloodshot eyes, but the lids opened again and would not remain closed. The slow labor of the feeble breathing went on. The almost imperceptible rise and fall of the great chest fascinated Mackenzie, and he found himself watching for it feverishly, hoping and yet dreading for it to cease.
While it was still dark he rose and went over to the window and looked out fixedly at the impenetrable pall of blackness that lay over the Station and the hospital. It seemed as though the heaviness of the blackness was over all the world.
By and by the night pall lifted a little, and a dull grayness crept into the heavens and rested on the station. He could dimly distinguish the outline of some of the military buildings. He turned away and went over to the lamp that was smoking and lowered it. From the trooper's bed came a low moaning.
He paused to speak to him and then he went back to Trevelyan, and looked down at him, his eyes fixed on the great chest, watching for its slow rise and fall. Somehow he could not see the rise and fall—they did not seem to be there. He bent over him quickly.
"Trevelyan!" he called sharply.
The trooper in the next bed ceased moaning and raised himself on his arm painfully, and looked over to where Mackenzie was standing.