While Cleggett was still wondering what significance could underlie this unusual form of matutinal exercise, Dr.Farnsworth came out of the forecastle and beckoned to him.The young Doctor had a red Vandyck beard sedulously cultivated in the belief that it would make him look olderand inspire the confidence of patients, and a shock of dark red hair which he rumpled vigorously when he was thinking.He was rumpling it now.
"Who's 'Loge'?" he demanded."Loge?" repeated Cleggett.
"You don't know anyone named 'Loge,' or Logan?" "No.Why?""Whoever he is, 'Loge' is very much on the mind of our young friend in there," said Farnsworth, with a movement of his head towards the forecastle."And I wouldn't be surprised, to judge from the boy's delirium, if 'Loge' had something to do with all the hell that's been raised around your ship.Come in and listen to this fellow."Miss Medley, the nurse, was sitting beside the wounded youth's bunk, endeavoring to soothe and restrain him.The young anarchist, whose eyes were bright with fever, was talking rapidly in a weak but high-pitched singsong voice.
"He's off on the poems again," said the Doctor, after listening a moment."But wait, he'll get back to Loge.It's been one or the other for an hour now.""I spit upon your flag," shrilled Giuseppe Jones, feebly declamatory."'I spit--I spit--but, as I spit, I weep.'" He paused for a moment, and then began at the beginning and repeated all of the lines which Cleggett had read from the little book.One gathered that it was Giuseppe's favorite poem.
"'I spit upon the whole damned thing!'" he shrilled, and then with a sad shake of his head: "But, as I spit, I weep!"If the poem was Giuseppe's favorite poem, this was evidently his favorite line, for he said it over and over again--"'But, as I spit, I weep'"-- in a breathless babble that was very wearing on the nerves.
But suddenly he interrupted himself; the poems seemed to pass from his mind."Loge!" he said, raising himself on his elbow and staring, with a frown not at, but through, Cleggett: "Logan--it isn't square!"There was suffering and perplexity in his gaze; he was evidently livingover again some painful scene.
"I'm a revolutionist, Loge, not a crook!I won't do it, Loge!" Watching him, it was impossible not to understand that the struggle,which his delirium made real and present again, had stamped itself into the texture of his spirit."You shouldn't ask it, Loge," he said.The crisis of the conflict which he was living over passed presently, and he murmured, with contracted brows, and as if talking to himself: "Is Loge a crook? A crook?"But after a moment of this he returned again to a rapid repetition of the phrase: "I'm a revolutionist, not a crook-not a crook--not a crook--a revolutionist, not a crook, Loge, not a crook--" Once he varied it, crying with a quick, hot scorn: "I'll cut their throats and be damned to them, but don't ask me to steal." And then he was off again to declaiming his poetry: "I spit, but, as I spit, I weep!"But as Cleggett and the Doctor listened to him the youth's ravings suddenly took a new form.He ceased to babble; terror expanded the pupils of his eyes and he pointed at vacancy with a shaking finger."Stop it!" he cried in a croaking whisper."Stop it! It's his skull--it's Loge's skull come alive.Stop it, I say, it's come alive and getting bigger." With a violent effort he raised himself before the nurse could prevent him, shrinking back from the horrid hallucination which pressed towards him, and then fell prone and senseless on the bunk.
"God!--his wounds!" cried the Doctor, starting forward.As Farnsworth had feared, they had broken open and were bleeding again."It's a ticklish thing," said Farnsworth, rumpling his hair."If I give him enough sedative to keep him quiet his heart may stop any time.If I don't, he'll thrash himself to pieces in his delirium before the day's over."But Cleggett scarcely heeded the Doctor.The reference to "Loge's" skull had flashed a sudden light into his mind.Whatever else "Loge" was, Cleggett had little doubt that "Loge" was the tall man with the stoop shoulders and the odd, skull- shaped scarfpin, for whom he had conceived at first sight such a tingling hatred--the same fellow who had so ruthlesslymanhandled the flaxen-haired Heinrich on the roof of the verandah the day before.
