It was midnight when the men had got their supper and began
unrolling their blankets to sleep on the floor of the long dock
waiting-rooms,--which in other days had been thronged by people
who came to welcome home-coming friends, or to bid them God-speed
to foreign shores. Claude and some of his men had tried to look
about them; but there was little to be seen. The bow of a boat,
painted in distracting patterns of black and white, rose at one
end of the shed, but the water itself was not visible. Down in
the cobble-paved street below they watched for awhile the long
line of drays and motor trucks that bumped all night into a vast
cavern lit by electricity, where crates and barrels and
merchandise of all kinds were piled, marked American
Expeditionary Forces; cases of electrical machinery from some
factory in Ohio, parts of automobiles, gun-carriages, bath-tubs,
hospital supplies, bales of cotton, cases of canned food, grey
metal tanks full of chemical fluids. Claude went back to the
waiting room, lay down and fell asleep with the glare of an
arc-light shining full in his face.
He was called at four in the morning and told where to report to
headquarters. Captain Maxey, stationed at a desk on one of the
landings, explained to his lieutenants that their company was to
sail at eight o'clock on the Anchises. It was an English boat, an
old liner pulled off the Australian trade, that could carry only
twenty-five hundred men. The crew was English, but part of the
stores,--the meat and fresh fruit and vegetables,--were furnished
by the United States Government. The Captain had been over the
boat during the night, and didn't like it very well. He had
expected to be scheduled for one of the fine big Hamburg-American
liners, with dining-rooms finished in rosewood, and ventilation
plants and cooling plants, and elevators running from top to
bottom like a New York office building. "However," he said,
"we'll have to make the best of it. They're using everything
that's got a bottom now."
The company formed for roll-call at one end of the shed, with
their packs and rifles. Breakfast was served to them while they
waited. After an hour's standing on the concrete, they saw
encouraging signs. Two gangplanks were lowered from the vessel at
the end of the slip, and up each of them began to stream a close
brown line of men in smart service caps. They recognized a
company of Kansas Infantry, and began to grumble because their
own service caps hadn't yet been given to them; they would have
to sail in their old Stetsons. Soon they were drawn into one of
the brown lines that went continuously up the gangways, like
belting running over machinery. On the deck one steward directed
the men down to the hold, and another conducted the officers to
their cabins. Claude was shown to a four-berth state-room. One of
his cabin mates, Lieutenant Fanning, of his own company, was
already there, putting his slender luggage in order. The steward
told them the officers were breakfasting in the dining saloon.
By seven o'clock all the troops were aboard, and the men were
allowed on deck. For the first time Claude saw the profile of New
York City, rising thin and gray against an opal-coloured morning
sky. The day had come on hot and misty. The sun, though it was
now high, was a red ball, streaked across with purple clouds. The
tall buildings, of which he had heard so much, looked
unsubstantial and illusionary,--mere shadows of grey and pink and
blue that might dissolve with the mist and fade away in it. The
boys were disappointed. They were Western men, accustomed to the
hard light of high altitudes, and they wanted to see the city
clearly; they couldn't make anything of these uneven towers that
rose dimly through the vapour. Everybody was asking questions.
Which of those pale giants was the Singer Building? Which the
Woolworth? What was the gold dome, dully glinting through the
fog? Nobody knew. They agreed it was a shame they could not have
had a day in New York before they sailed away from it, and that
they would feel foolish in Paris when they had to admit they had
never so much as walked up Broadway. Tugs and ferry boats and
coal barges were moving up and down the oily river, all novel
sights to the men. Over in the Canard and French docks they saw
the first examples of the "camouflage" they had heard so much
about; big vessels daubed over in crazy patterns that made the
eyes ache, some in black and white, some in soft rainbow colours.
A tug steamed up alongside and fastened. A few moments later a
man appeared on the bridge and began to talk to the captain.
Young Fanning, who had stuck to Claude's side, told him this was
the pilot, and that his arrival meant they were going to start.
They could see the shiny instruments of a band assembling in the
bow.
"Let's get on the other side, near the rail if we can," said
Fanning. "The fellows are bunching up over here because they want
to look at the Goddess of Liberty as we go out. They don't even
know this boat turns around the minute she gets into the river.
They think she's going over stern first!"
It was not easy to cross the deck; every inch was covered by a
boot. The whole superstructure was coated with brown uniforms;
they clung to the boat davits, the winches, the railings and
ventilators, like bees in a swarm. Just as the vessel was backing
out, a breeze sprang up and cleared the air. Blue sky broke
overhead, and the pale silhouette of buildings on the long island
grew sharp and hard. Windows flashed flame-coloured in their grey
sides, the gold and bronze tops of towers began to gleam where
the sunlight struggled through. The transport was sliding down
toward the point, and to the left the eye caught the silver
cobweb of bridges, seen confusingly against each other.
"There she is!" "Hello, old girl!" "Good-bye, sweetheart!"
The swarm surged to starboard. They shouted and gesticulated to
the image they were all looking for,--so much nearer than they
had expected to see her, clad in green folds, with the mist
streaming up like smoke behind. For nearly every one of those
twenty-five hundred boys, as for Claude, it was their first
glimpse of the Bartholdi statue. Though she was such a definite
image in their minds, they had not imagined her in her setting of
sea and sky, with the shipping of the world coming and going at
her feet, and the moving cloud masses behind her. Post-card
pictures had given them no idea of the energy of her large
gesture, or how her heaviness becomes light among the vapourish
elements. "France gave her to us," they kept saying, as they
saluted her. Before Claude had got over his first thrill, the
Kansas band in the bow began playing "Over There." Two thousand
voices took it up, booming out over the water the gay,
indomitable resolution of that jaunty air.
A Staten Island ferry-boat passed close under the bow of the
transport. The passengers were office-going people, on their way
to work, and when they looked up and saw these hundreds of faces,
all young, all bronzed and grinning, they began to shout and wave
their handkerchiefs. One of the passengers was an old clergyman,
a famous speaker in his day, now retired, who went over to the
City every morning to write editorials for a church paper. He
closed the book he was reading, stood by the rail, and taking off
his hat began solemnly to quote from a poet who in his time was
still popular. "Sail on," he quavered,
"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State,
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate."
As the troop ship glided down the sea lane, the old man still
watched it from the turtle-back. That howling swarm of brown arms
and hats and faces looked like nothing, but a crowd of American
boys going to a football game somewhere. But the scene was
ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a
sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase... and on their
departure they were making vows to a bronze image in the sea.