In those rare flashes of semi-consciousness which sometimes come to the fever-stricken, he reckoned himself a dying man and contemplated the end of all things without enthusiasm and without regret.

The one and only failure of his life had eaten like canker into his heart.

It was death he craved for in the hot, burning nights, and death came and sat, a grisly shadow, at his pillow.

The doctor and the boy did their best, but it was not they who saved him.
There came a night when he raved, and the sound of a woman's name rang out from the open windows of the little bungalow, rang out through the drawn mosquito netting amongst the palm-trees, across the surf-topped sea to the great steamer which lay in the bay.

Perhaps she heard it--perhaps after all it was a fancy.