The voice trailed off into nothing.
To the doctor, charging slowly back and forth along the near deck, his hands locked behind him and his face bent slightly over his breast, there came a queer sense of separation, from Hallett, from himself, his own everyday acts, his own familiar aspirations, from the ship which held him up in the dark void between two continents.
What was it all about, he asked himself over and over. Each time he passed the shadow in the companionway he turned his head, painfully, and as if against his will. Once he stopped squarely at the foot of the cot and stood staring down at the figure there, faintly outlined, motionless and mute. Sweat stood for a moment on his brow, and was gone in the steady onrush of the wind. And he was used to death.
But Hallett had fooled him. He heard Hallett’s whisper creeping to him out of the shadow:
“That’s a bright star, doctor.”
[THE BIRD OF SERBIA]
By JULIAN STREET
From Collier’s Weekly
Copyright, 1918, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc.
Copyright, 1919, by Julian Street.