Poltavo was silent a moment. "No," he said finally, "I do not agree." Baggin regarded him blackly. "I see your point," he said, with biting emphasis. "With the others"--he wet his dry lips--"you cast the black vote fast enough----" The count elevated his eyebrows. "Why refer to such things?" he objected mildly. "If they be necessary--do them, swiftly and well--but be silent, even as Nature is silent. For Mr. Grayson, he is--how you say--a very sick man. Perhaps----" He shrugged his shoulders and did not finish the sentence. He bent down to the unconscious man. "Lend a hand," he said quietly to Baggin. The American obeyed, sullenly, and, between them, they half supported, half carried Grayson to his cabin. CHAPTER XXXIV THE LAST OF THE NINE To a calm sea, to a dawn all pearl and rose, the crew of the _Maria Braganza_ woke. In the night, the speed of the warship had been accelerated until she was moving at her top speed, and two columns of black smoke belched from her great funnels. The two men who came on deck at the same moment did not speak one to the other. Baggin was pale; there were dark circles about his eyes; he looked like a man who had not slept. But Count Poltavo was unperturbed. Clear-eyed, shaven, not unusually pallid, he woke as from a pleasant dream, and appeared on deck immaculate from point of shoe to fingernail. All the morning preparations were going on. Ammunition came up from the magazine, dilatory quartermasters swung out guns; on the masthead was an under-officer armed with a telescope. He was the principal object of interest to the men on the quarter-deck. Every few minutes their eyes would go sweeping aloft. Beyond the curtest salutations, neither the captain, Baggin, nor the calm Poltavo spoke. In Baggin's heart grew a new terror, and he avoided the count. The sun beat down on the stretch of awning that protected the privileged three, but, for some reason, Baggin did not feel the heat. He had a something on his mind; a question to ask; and at last he summoned his resolution to put it. He walked over to where the count sat reading. "Ivan," he said--he had never so addressed him before--"is the end near?" The count had raised his clear eyes when the other had come toward him; he smiled. "Which variety of end?" he asked. "There is only one variety," said Baggin steadily. "There is only one thing in the world that counts, and that is life." "Not money?" asked the Russian, with a faint, ironical smile. "Not money," repeated Baggin. "Least of all, money--but life!" Poltavo arose. He had seen the flutter of a white skirt at the far end of the promenade-deck. "Life," he said, with soft deliberateness, "is the least of all gifts, my friend. It is of no more consequence than the crystal of snow which is lost in the foul mud beneath our feet, or the drop of dew which is burned up by the ardent rays of the sun." He turned upon his heel.