ON THE FEVER SHIP
There were four rails around the ship\'s sides, the three lower ones of
iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from the
canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him in.
Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which ended in a
line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms. Beyond that
again rose a range of mountain- peaks, and, stuck upon the loftiest peak of
all, a tiny block- house. It rested on the brow of the mountain against the
naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon the dome of a great
cathedral.
As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her
sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines. From
his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe, painstaking
interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very block-house
itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight. And again it sank to
the level of the line of breakers, and wiped them out of the picture as
though they were a line of chalk.
The soldier on the cot promised himself that the next swell of the sea
would send the lowest rail climbing to the very top of the palm-trees or,
even higher, to the base of the mountains; and when it failed to reach even
the palm-trees he felt a distinct sense of ill use, of having been wronged by
some one. There was no other reason for submitting to this existence,
save these tricks upon the wearisome, glaring landscape; and, now,
whoever it was who was working them did not seem to be making this
effort to entertain him with any heartiness.