The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 180: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Written in Water. 173 peace? Can IJ not even take a walk without you dogging my steps? Stand back, I say.” But John did not step back. “Mr. Leslie,” he said, “you are ill. Let me help you to the house.”’ What reply might have been made cannot be known, for just then, as Gerald attempted to push him back, a ceush of blood flowed from his lips, and together John and Gracie carried the student and recluse to his room. One night—it was Twelfth night, I believe—Gerald was very ill and Gracie was attending him. He had been writing during the day upon his “great work,” and had added a chapter to it. But toward night he had become restive, had walked to and fro across his library floor, and at length sank back exhausted into the depths of an easy chair beside his study table, upon which were ranged sinister looking volumes, note books, blocks of paper and the last pages of his manuscript. As the early winter sunset sent its last tinted rays in at the western window and upon his writing table he said to himself: “Written in water!’ One once told me, when I talked of high ambition, that men’s names, who had such high desires, were often written in water. We were at the sea- shore then and were tracing our names in the sand. The tide washed them away half an hour later. He said that was fame; to write one’s name upon the earth and have it erased before an hour had passed. “But how many others,’ he added, ‘write their names in water, this is Conniclooolk (CO)