“There was a couple of letters in my clothes—one addressed to a paper in ’Frisco, and one to me.”
The other was curious enough to send an orderly to search.
“Have him bring the package of paper, too,” Morning said. When all was brought in good order, he added: “This letter to me I’ll read later. The larger package is Duke Fallows’ first hurried story of the battle of Liaoyang. I won’t read that either, because I’ve got to do one of my own. I did one, you know—ten times as long as this—but the Hun huises got it on the Liao-crossing, from Tawan—that’s where I got cut up. Morning of the fourth, it was.... The sorrel mare did fifteen miles with her guts sticking out, and I walked thirty to Koupangtse, with these wounds and smashed from a couple of falls—before the morning of the fifth.... You can look at Duke Fallows’ story, Doctor, and I’ll take a little doze——”
Fallows’ battle was done clearly as a football game, and as briskly, to the withdrawal of the Russian lines upon the inner positions of the city and the flanking movement of Kuroki. A dramatic pause then to survey the Russian force on the eve of disaster, from which the reader drew the big moral sickness. After that Lowenkampf, the millet and the Ploughman. In quite a remarkable way Fallows turned the reader now from the mass to the individual. In a little trampled place in the grain the battle was lost by the Russians and won by Japan.... The Doctor was interrupted several times, but no force was missed. It was a new voice to him. He wondered if Fallows would make the world hear it. It seemed to compel a reckoning.
The Fallows story laughed all the way. One did not have to look twice at a sentence to understand, yet two readings did not wear it out, nor would it leave one alone. All the time the Doctor read, matters he had heard in delirium from the lips of John Morning came back.
Nevin remembered the tears on the first morning, the choke in his own throat; the first sight of the wounds, the queer, extra zeal he had put into this case. Finally he could hardly wait to learn the rest—chiefly how John Morning had happened to be lying in the darkest end of the hammock-hole, over against the insane compartment.... Yet he did not wake up his patient. When Morning finally opened his eyes, it was time for nourishment. Nevin brought a glass of extra wine before inquiring. “First, tell me—has Ferry seen me?”
“Captain Ferry, the quartermaster?”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather think not. He’s about occasionally—but his truck with the sick men is mostly transportation and nourishment——”
“The second time I came to ask him to take me across that afternoon—the second time,” Morning said slowly, “he told me that if I appeared on his deck again he’d send me ashore in irons. You see the Sickles is to beat the Coptic in. I had to come. Why, the mails couldn’t beat me through from Liaoyang.... I finally got aboard with some soldiers—but I would have leeched to the anchor.... And, say, I think I knew you that morning. It seemed as if I could let go when I felt your hands——”