tickets and steamer accommodation.

The chase was long, for when a man is journeying literally for the dear
life, he does not tarry upon the road. Round the world Hay swept anew,
and overtook the wearied Doctor, who had been sent out to look for him,
in Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the
assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching
always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned
eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to
the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof
of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was
better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was thus
the equal of the undying sun. The other Hay would pay his expenses
throughout eternity.

It is true that we cannot yet take tickets from Calais to Hongkong,
though that will come about in fifteen years; but men say that if you
wander along the southern coast of India you shall find in a neatly
whitewashed little bungalow, sitting in a chair swung from the roof,
over a sheet of thin steel which he knows so well destroys the
attraction of the earth, an old and worn man who for ever faces the
rising sun, a stop-watch in his hand, racing against eternity. He cannot
drink, he does not smoke, and his living expenses amount to perhaps
twenty-five rupees a month, but he is John Hay, the Immortal. Without,
he hears the thunder of the wheeling world with which he is careful to
explain he has no connection whatever; but if you say that it is only
the noise of the surf, he will cry bitterly, for the shadow on his brain
is passing away as the brain ceases to work, and he doubts sometimes
whether the doctor spoke the truth.