One of Ours - Willa Cather (great book club books .TXT) 📗

alarming attack of nosebleed, and by morning he was so weak that he had to be carried to the hospital. The Doctor said they might as well face the facts; a scourge of influenza had broken out on board, of a peculiarly bloody and malignant type.1 Everybody was a little frightened. Some of the officers shut themselves up in the smoking-room, and drank whiskey and soda and played poker all day, as if they could keep contagion out.

Lieutenant Bird died late in the afternoon and was buried at sunrise the next day, sewed up in a tarpaulin, with an eighteen pound shell at his feet. The morning broke brilliantly clear and bitter cold. The sea was rolling blue walls of water, and the boat was raked by a wind as sharp as ice. Excepting those who were sick, the boys turned out to a man. It was the first burial at sea they had ever witnessed, and they couldn’t help finding it interesting. The Chaplain read the burial service while they stood with uncovered heads. The Kansas band played a solemn march, the Swedish quartette sang a hymn. Many a man turned his face away when that brown sack was lowered into the cold, leaping indigo ridges that seemed so destitute of anything friendly to human kind. In a moment it was done, and they steamed on without him.

The glittering walls of water kept rolling in, indigo, purple, more brilliant than on the days of mild weather. The blinding sunlight did not temper the cold, which cut the face and made the lungs ache. Landsmen began to have that miserable sense of being where they were never meant to be. The boys lay in heaps on the deck, trying to keep warm by hugging each other close. Everybody was seasick. Fanning went to bed with his clothes on, so sick he couldn’t take off his boots. Claude lay in the crowded stern, too cold, too faint to move. The sun poured over them like flame, without any comfort in it. The strong, curling, foam-crested waves threw off the light like millions of mirrors, and their colour was almost more than the eye could bear. The water seemed denser than before, heavy like melted glass, and the foam on the edges of each blue ridge looked sharp as crystals. If a man should fall into them, he would be cut to pieces.

The whole ocean seemed suddenly to have come to life, the waves had a malignant, graceful, muscular energy, were animated by a kind of mocking cruelty. Only a few hours ago a gentle boy had been thrown into that freezing water and forgotten. Yes, already forgotten; everyone had his own miseries to think about.

Late in the afternoon the wind fell, and there was a sinister sunset. Across the red west a small, ragged black cloud hurried⁠—then another, and another. They came up out of the sea⁠—wild, witchlike shapes that travelled fast and met in the west as if summoned for an evil conclave. They hung there against the afterglow, distinct black shapes, drawing together, devising something. The few men who were left on deck felt that no good could come out of a sky like that. They wished they were at home, in France, anywhere but here.

VI

The next morning Doctor Trueman asked Claude to help him at sick call. “I’ve got a bunch of sergeants taking temperatures, but it’s too much for one man to oversee. I don’t want to ask anything of those dude officers who sit in there playing poker all the time. Either they’ve got no conscience, or they’re not awake to the gravity of the situation.”

The doctor stood on deck in his raincoat, his foot on the rail to keep his equilibrium, writing on his knee as the long string of men came up to him. There were more than seventy in the line that morning, and some of them looked as if they ought to be in a drier place. Rain beat down on the sea like lead bullets. The old Anchises floundered from one grey ridge to another, quite alone. Fog cut off the cheering sight of the sister ships. The doctor had to leave his post from time to time, when seasickness got the better of his will. Claude, at his elbow, was noting down names and temperatures. In the middle of his work he told the sergeants to manage without him for a few minutes. Down near the end of the line he had seen one of his own men misconducting himself, snivelling and crying like a baby⁠—a fine husky boy of eighteen who had never given any trouble. Claude made a dash for him and clapped him on the shoulder.

“If you can’t stop that, Bert Fuller, get where you won’t be seen. I don’t want all these English stewards standing around to watch an American soldier cry. I never heard of such a thing!”

“I can’t help it, Lieutenant,” the boy blubbered. “I’ve kept it back just as long as I can. I can’t hold in any longer!”

“What’s the matter with you? Come over here and sit down on this box and tell me.”

Private Fuller willingly let himself be led, and dropped on the box. “I’m so sick, Lieutenant!”

“I’ll see how sick you are.” Claude stuck a thermometer into his mouth, and while he waited, sent the deck steward to bring a cup of tea. “Just as I thought, Fuller. You’ve not half a degree of fever. You’re scared, and that’s all. Now drink this tea. I expect you didn’t eat any breakfast.”

“No, sir. I can’t eat the awful stuff on this boat.”

“It is pretty bad. Where are you from?”

“I’m from P-P-Pleasantville, up on the P-P-Platte,” the boy gulped, and his tears began to flow afresh.

“Well, now, what would they think of you, back there? I suppose they got the band out and made a fuss over you when you went away, and thought