Swan grew worse toward morning, and though the disease had only attacked him at sunset the night before, so rapid and terrible were its onslaughts that by the time the sun rose a complete physical collapse had occurred. His pulse had fallen below normal, and his skin assumed a strange yellow hue, the color of a lemon, and in these signs and the constant hiccough which convulsed the death-stricken frame Pilchard guessed properly what the termination must be. The end would come easily. Swan had ceased to suffer.
When light crept gray and silent into the shanty, Pilchard stood and looked at Swan’s prostrate form. No sound came to them but the gentle lapping of the waves. Sober as a dove Day hovered in the sky, and that solemn change which is Death was somewhere near, hiding and waiting; and Pilchard and Death and the breaking Day were for one second alone. And Pilchard was overwhelmed with terror. Some spectre had seized him, and he could not shake it off. He looked once more at the dying man, at his closed eyes and his still body, momentarily convulsed by the final signs of life, like a great piece of machinery when the steam power is gradually running down. Then he turned and broke away, to take a bath and to take a drink and then go to meet the steamer from San Francisco....
“Eleven? You don’t say. Fever, I suppose?”
“Yes. We tackled three swamps on our way down from Mexico.”
“That so? Well, it’s worth some sacrifice. It’s a good job. I wouldn’t ’a’ undertaken it myself.”
“I wouldn’t do it again.”
They walked down the dock....
Swan opened his eyes and looked through the wide opening of the shanty out to where the blazing sun struck the hot water of the little harbor. He hardly remembered where he was. Oh yes! He must get up and go down-town. In a minute, when he was fully awake. And he closed his eyes again and heard the accustomed whir of machinery, and knew that he was in the engine-room. One of the workmen needed to be spoken to; he was the filthiest of the lot, and Swan was the only man who could control him. Suddenly Swan opened his eyes again and saw that this same workman had entered the shanty and was standing beside him. He instantly recognized the man’s greasy black shirt.
“For science is a cruel mistress,” the man said. “She exacts her yearly tribute of flesh and blood.”