In the joy of creating it, he was lost to all about him. He did not
know that the engines, driven to the breaking-point, were filling the
ship with their groans and protests, that the deck beneath his feet
was quivering like the floor of a planing-mill, nor that his fever
was rising again, and feeding on his veins. The turmoil of leaping
engines and of throbbing pulses was confused with the story he was
writing, and while his mind was inflamed with pictures of warring
battle-ships, his body was swept by the fever, which overran him like
an army of tiny mice, touching his hot skin with cold, tingling taps
of their scampering feet.
From time to time the captain stopped at the door of the chart-room
and observed him in silent admiration. To the man who with difficulty
composed a letter to his family, the fact that Channing was writing
something to be read by millions of people, and more rapidly than he
could have spoken the same words, seemed a superhuman effort. He even
hesitated to interrupt it by an offer of food.
But the fever would not let Channing taste of the food when they
placed it at his elbow, and even as he pushed it away, his mind was
still fixed upon the paragraph before him.
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