written on my heart now--we two shall meet and know each other!
With that conviction strong within me, I volunteered for this
service, as I would have volunteered for anything that set work
and hardship and danger, like ramparts, between my misery and me.
With that conviction strong within me still, I tell you it is no
matter whether I stay here with the sick, or go hence with the
strong. I shall live till I have met that man! There is a day of
reckoning appointed between us. Here in the freezing cold, or
away in the deadly heat; in battle or in shipwreck; in the face
of starvation; under the shadow of pestilence--I, though hundreds
are falling round me, I shall live! live for the coming of one
day! live for the meeting with one man!"

He stopped, trembling, body and soul, under the hold that his own
terrible superstition had fastened on him. Crayford drew back in
silent horror. Wardour noticed the action--he resented it--he
appealed, in defense of his one cherished conviction, to
Crayford's own experience of him.

"Look at me!" he cried. "Look how I have lived and thriven, with
the heart-ache gnawing at me at home, and the winds of the icy
north whistling round me here! I am the strongest man among you.
Why? I have fought through hardships that have laid the
best-seasoned men of all our party on their backs. Why? What have
_I_ done, that my life should throb as bravely through every vein
in my body at this minute, and in this deadly place, as ever it
did in the wholesome breezes of home? What am I preserved for? I
tell you again, for the coming of one day--for the meeting with
one man."