‘What a night!’ he said. ‘What a ghastly, hellish, stifling night! Look at that oily pond, can’t you feel the heat lifting out of it into your face. I used to think nothing could lick the Queensland bush, but, Great Lordy! this is worse, many points worse; there was always a kind of a breeze there and some stir of life, but this flat, oily waste--Oh! for a breath of air. I can’t breathe; I tell you, Armand, I can’t breathe.’ He turned round to the mate fiercely, and threw out his thin hands, as if to thrust from him some suffocating weight. ‘What’s the good of you sea-men,’ he laughed a feeble hoarse laugh, ‘if you can’t fetch some sort of air up out of your hell-doomed oceans?’ ‘No fear, Doctor, we’ll get you some before long annyway, three days flat cãlm is a big spell even for the Doldrums. How’s her head, my son?’ he called to the grey-bearded helmsman. ‘Nor-nor West, zurr.’ ‘Is she doing anny?’ ‘Noa, zurr, but zims theer’s a but of a swell tu th’ Sou East, mebbe we’ll ’ave wind ’fore the marnin’.’ The Shellback spat on his hand and held it out, then shook his head doubtfully. ‘The dawn will bring it,’ said the mate, ‘you will see.’ ‘Not to me,’ said the Doctor to himself, ‘I’m through.’ Young Raymond turned at the sound of the dreary despairing voice. ‘What’s that?’ he said, ‘Through! we’re _all_ through, we’re all kippered to the nines; don’t be so beastly egotistical, Doctor, you’ve got no blooming monopoly.’ The sunny ring of his voice through the jaded night was as refreshing as a breeze, but the Doctor only said moodily: ‘Yes, my friend, but I guess you weren’t fried to start with, there was still some English juice in you; _you_ haven’t been spread-eagled on a gridiron for seven years till everything’s been sucked out of you,--even sleep.’ ‘Thank the Lord,’ said young Raymond in fervent tones, as he threw his head back, and snuffed at an imaginary breeze, ‘I can always sleep.’ ‘Sleep!’ echoed the Doctor shrilly, and his thin scarecrow of a figure writhed against the railing of the bulwark, ‘I havn’t slept for _weeks_,--I’m going home, _home_, I tell you, after seven God-forsaken years, but I’d give it all, and chuck in the rest of my life, for twenty-four hours of natural sleep.’ At the word ‘natural’ the mate shifted uneasily in his seat, and his foot beat a tatoo incessantly on the deck.