laughed to think of himself, the chairman of the Ball committee,
plodding along the splintered dock in a dusty uniform and buff leggings
and with the rudiments of a scraggly beard on his face. It was a queer
ending.
Down there, the others were floating round, now, to high-priced music
from town. In a little note which Pellams had brought him from Her that
morning, she had said that she was to wear a small silk flag instead of
flowers this time. He would have liked to peep in, as he used to from
the gym roof when he was a Freshie, to see if she had really done it.
During these wharf-edge musings, taps had blown, bringing the men on
board again. On the way up the plank, he remembered, they passed one of
the fellows with his face in his hands, and Tom had to put his arm
around the boy and lead him, so that he might be in quarters in time.
Neither of them could know that this was to be the one who did not
return.
He had his first sight of the hold, after that, and the truth knocked
out some of the poetry. Ashley, and K Company in general, were quartered
just over the screw; but a man gets used to anything, even to bullets
that sing past your ears and clip off little bamboo leaves about two
feet from your hair. There were twelve hundred men below decks; when
most of the landsmen should be seasick--ugh!
The second night, Tuesday, he had sat with Cap among the coiled ropes on
deck. Beyond the shipping, the city of hills twinkled at them, striped
with long, sloping lines of dotted light; out of the blackness above,
the crown of the Spreckels building made a circlet like a halo over St.
Francis and his city; across the bay slid the mysterious, luminous
honeycombs of the silent ferry-boats. Far aft, the band was trying to
cheer things up with a Sousa march. That very tune was being played,
probably, down there where the Quadrangle, softly glowing with the faint
edging of lanterns, shimmered in the fairy-land mystery of long
palm-studded vistas, a-flutter with white dresses.
"They are saying good-bye to each other, now," said Tom, by way of a
feeler.
"Humph!" said Cap. He was flat on his back, looking up at the stars. "It
doesn't mean anything. When you're going to pull out across the Pacific
for God knows what, then it's different."
"I didn't expect to spend this evening lying on a ship's deck," murmured
Tom. He was thinking of what the Promenade Concert usually means to
people who have been taught something by co-education. That good-bye,
said in the Quadrangle when the music and the thoughtless people have
gone and the lanterns blaze up and drop, one after another, and lie
smoldering on the moonlit asphalt; those last words with people from
whom you have concealed yourself these four years and to whom you can
now afford to lay open your heart, as can the happy dead, because your
ways after to-night may lie apart,--Tom knew that this good-bye does
mean something, in spite of the superior announcement of Sophomore
Smith. Only it meant more to a fellow lying thinking about it among the
ropes of a transport's deck, with the Spaniards in prospect.
Cap's cigarette shone like a glowworm in the shadow of the stack.
"Our good-bye supper will be sloppy weather, all right;" said he. "Six
going out."
"No," answered Tom, "it won't be a drunk to-night, Cap. You haven't been
in long enough. I'll bet they don't get through the first case; I'll bet
it's a cry. You didn't see '95 go out."
"Well, perhaps," assented the Sophomore. "The fellows are pretty well
worked up."
Tom went back to his Freshman days.
"I remember our '95 feed in the Hall. Stanton cried that night, and
Gray. I never saw them do it before." Then, more slowly, "It must be
tough on a girl."
After which he was not talkative.
There was little enough, this last morning, to suggest Commencement, as
he leaned on the damp rail of the ship and dreamed over the last few
days. A voice at his elbow said:
"Captain wants you, Sergeant."
Tom started out of his reverie, and the military tilt came into his
back. He was not a student bidding the College farewell; he was a
sergeant at eighteen a month and lucky to get so much.
The city had awakened when he came to the rail again. There was a tense
feeling abroad, a gathering excitement that grew through the morning.
All manner of water-craft fussed and fumed and dodged around the
transports,--tugs, rowboats, launches and clumsy river steamers strung
with flags and black with civilians. One tug that hung close by shone
with more color than the others by reason of the women crowding it; Tom
could discern the face of his mother looking, looking with yearning eyes
that would have called him back. He drew a quick breath of surprise and
his hands tightened on the black rigging. There on the tug, standing
beside his mother instead of among those who were saying good-bye to the
Campus, he saw the Other One.
* * * * *
Soon after three, the screw throbbed, moved, the craft wheeled into
lines flanking the huge vessel; the noises of the city awoke:
"For the large birds of prey
They'll carry you away,
And you'll never see your soldiers any more."
The grey town lay back among her hills, shrieking with every manner of
mechanical voice her farewell to the troops. Above this uproar rose and
fell the weird sobbing of a siren and a cannon from the top of a
sky-scraper boomed in at solemn intervals. On the roofs were knots of
people flashing white signals of Godspeed; when the wind was right, one
could catch, very faintly, the sound of their cheering.
The flotilla drew around the curving water-front and toward the Gate. To
the left, the remains of the camp dotted the plain below the Presidio
hills; every last man of them was on the bulkhead in front of the fort,
waving his brown hat and cheering the lucky devils who went first. The
great hill guns bellowed good-bye as the transports slipped through the
gleaming strait. Gradually the convoy wheeled 'round again, the bigger
vessels keeping up until outside the Heads. Then the first expedition
went on alone.
Tom Ashley, Senior and 'Varsity fullback, with his eyes wet in spite of
himself, set his face to the west. The round sun hung red above the
horizon; a few seconds earlier, it had looked over the Palo Alto hills
at the deserted University campus. Beyond the ship, a path of gold lay
out toward Manila and its future. Marion, leaning beside him, looked
back at the fading line of surf below the Cliff House.
"Well, Tom," he said, a bit huskily, "Commencement Day's over."
"Yes," answered the Sergeant, without turning, "we're up against it, all
right!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: On May 25, 1898, Commencement Day at the
University, the First California Volunteers sailed for the
Philippine Islands. With Company K of that regiment went
thirty-five Stanford students, a part of the hundred who
volunteered, in various regiments, for the Spanish War.]
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have
been fixed. Corrections in the text are noted below, with corrections
inside the brackets:
Table of Contents: typos fixed
The Substituted Full-back[Fullback]
A Song-cycle[Song Cycle] and a Puncture
page 21: typo fixed
"Ill[I'll] be hanged if I will!" shouted the
patient, preparing to rise.
page 106: typo fixed
special runs up on the University track and stops
betwen[between] the Library and Encina, the flaming bunting
page 141: typo fixed
Your theory might work all right at a city college or even at
Berkeley, but on this campus, nit[not] so!"
page 270: typo fixed
talking it over, and when the civilians had drifted off to
ed[bed] or to the inglorious studies of a routine now ended for