All the first morning Tod Fanning showed Claude over the
boat,--not that Fanning had ever been on anything bigger than a
Lake Michigan steamer, but he knew a good deal about machinery,
and did not hesitate to ask the deck stewards to explain anything
he didn't know. The stewards, indeed all the crew, struck the
boys as an unusually good-natured and obliging set of men.
The fourth occupant of number 96, Claude's cabin, had not turned
up by noon, nor had any of his belongings, so the three who had
settled their few effects there began to hope they would have the
place to themselves. It would be crowded enough, at that. The
third bunk was assigned to an officer from the Kansas regiment,
Lieutenant Bird, a Virginian, who had been working in his uncle's
bank in Topeka when he enlisted. He and Claude sat together at
mess. When they were at lunch, the Virginian said in his very
gentle voice:
"Lieutenant, I wish you'd explain Lieutenant Fanning to me. He
seems very immature. He's been telling me about a submarine
destroyer he's invented, but it looks to me like foolishness."
Claude laughed. "Don't try to understand Fanning. Just let him
sink in, and you'll come to like him. I used to wonder how he
ever got a commission. You never can tell what crazy thing he'll
do."
Fanning had, for instance, brought on board a pair of white
flannel pants, his first and only tailor-made trousers, because
he had a premonition that the boat would make a port and that he
would be asked to a garden party! He had a way of using big words
in the wrong place, not because he tried to show off, but because
all words sounded alike to him. In the first days of their
acquaintance in camp he told Claude that this was a failing he
couldn't help, and that it was called "anaesthesia." Sometimes
this failing was confusing; when Fanning sententiously declared
that he would like to be on hand when the Crown Prince settled
his little account with Plato, Claude was perplexed until
subsequent witticisms revealed that the boy meant Pluto.
At three o'clock there was a band concert on deck. Claude fell
into talk with the bandmaster, and was delighted to find that he
came from Hillport, Kansas, a town where Claude had once been
with his father to buy cattle, and that all his fourteen men came
from Hillport. They were the town band, had enlisted in a body,
had gone into training together, and had never been separated.
One was a printer who helped to get out the Hillport Argus every
week, another clerked in a grocery store, another was the son of
a German watch repairer, one was still in High School, one worked
in an automobile livery. After supper Claude found them all
together, very much interested in their first evening at sea, and
arguing as to whether the sunset on the water was as fine as
those they saw every night in Hillport. They hung together in a
quiet, determined way, and if you began to talk to one, you soon
found that all the others were there.
When Claude and Fanning and Lieutenant Bird were undressing in
their narrow quarters that night, the fourth berth was still
unclaimed. They were in their bunks and almost asleep, when the
missing man came in and unceremoniously turned on the light. They
were astonished to see that he wore the uniform of the Royal
Flying Corps and carried a cane. He seemed very young, but the
three who peeped out at him felt that he must be a person of
consequence. He took off his coat with the spread wings on the
collar, wound his watch, and brushed his teeth with an air of
special personal importance. Soon after he had turned out the
light and climbed into the berth over Lieutenant Bird, a heavy
smell of rum spread in the close air.
Fanning, who slept under Claude, kicked the sagging mattress
above him and stuck his head out. "Hullo, Wheeler! What have you
got up there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing smells pretty good to me. I'll have some with anybody
that asks me."
No response from any quarter. Bird, the Virginian, murmured,
"Don't make a row," and they went to sleep.
In the morning, when the bath steward came, he edged his way into
the narrow cabin and poked his head into the berth over Bird's.
"I'm sorry, sir, I've made careful search for your luggage, and
it's not to be found, sir."
"I tell you it must be found," fumed a petulant voice overhead.
"I brought it over from the St. Regis myself in a taxi. I saw it
standing on the pier with the officers' luggage,--a black cabin
trunk with V.M. lettered on both ends. Get after it."
The steward smiled discreetly. He probably knew that the aviator
had come on board in a state which precluded any very accurate
observation on his part. "Very well, sir. Is there anything I can
get you for the present?"
"You can take this shirt out and have it laundered and bring it
back to me tonight. I've no linen in my bag."
"Yes, sir."
Claude and Fanning got on deck as quickly as possible and found
scores of their comrades already there, pointing to dark smudges
of smoke along the clear horizon. They knew that these vessels
had come from unknown ports, some of them far away, steaming
thither under orders known only to their commanders. They would
all arrive within a few hours of each other at a given spot on
the surface of the ocean. There they would fall into place,
flanked by their destroyers, and would proceed in orderly
formation, without changing their relative positions. Their
escort would not leave them until they were joined by gunboats
and destroyers off whatever coast they were bound for,--what that
coast was, not even their own officers knew as yet.
Later in the morning this meeting was actually accomplished.
There were ten troop ships, some of them very large boats, and
six destroyers. The men stood about the whole morning, gazing
spellbound at their sister transports, trying to find out their
names, guessing at their capacity. Tanned as they already were,
their lips and noses began to blister under the fiery sunlight.
After long months of intensive training, the sudden drop into an
idle, soothing existence was grateful to them. Though their pasts
were neither long or varied, most of them, like Claude Wheeler,
felt a sense of relief at being rid of all they had ever been
before and facing something absolutely new. Said Tod Fanning, as
he lounged against the rail, "Whoever likes it can run for a
train every morning, and grind his days out in a Westinghouse
works; but not for me any more!"
The Virginian joined them. "That Englishman ain't got out of bed
yet. I reckon he's been liquouring up pretty steady. The place
smells like a bar. The room steward was just coming out, and he
winked at me. He was slipping something in his pocket, looked
like a banknote."
Claude was curious, and went down to the cabin. As he entered,
the air-man, lying half-dressed in his upper berth, raised
himself on one elbow and looked down at him. His blue eyes were
contracted and hard, his curly hair disordered, but his cheeks
were as pink as a girl's, and the little yellow humming-bird
moustache on his upper lip was twisted sharp.
"You're missing fine weather," said Claude affably.
"Oh, there'll be a great deal of weather before we get over, and
damned little of anything else!" He drew a bottle from under his
pillow. "Have a nip?"
"I don't mind if I do," Claude put out his hand.
The other laughed and sank back on his pillow, drawling lazily,
"Brave boy! Go ahead; drink to the Kaiser."
"Why to him in particular?"
"It's not particular. Drink to Hindenburg, or the High Command,
or anything else that got you out of the cornfield. That's where
they did get you, didn't they?"
"Well, it's a good guess, anyhow. Where did they get you?"
"Crystal Lake, Iowa. I think that was the place." He yawned and
folded his hands over his stomach.
"Why, we thought you were an Englishman."
"Not quite. I've served in His Majesty's army two years, though."
"Have you been flying in France?"
"Yes. I've been back and forth all the time, England and France.
Now I've wasted two months at Fort Worth. Instructor. That's not
my line. I may have been sent over as a reprimand. You can't tell
about my Colonel, though; may have been his way of getting me out
of danger."
Claude glanced up at him, shocked at such an idea.
The young man in the berth smiled with listless compassion. "Oh,
I don't mean Bosch planes! There are dangers and dangers. You'll
find you got bloody little information about this war, where they
trained you. They don't communicate any details of importance.
Going?"
Claude hadn't intended to, but at this suggestion he pulled back
the door.
"One moment," called the aviator. "Can't you keep that
long-legged ass who bunks under you quiet?"
"Fanning? He's a good kid. What's the matter with him?"
"His general ignorance and his insufferably familiar tone,"
snapped the other as he turned over.
Claude found Fanning and the Virginian playing checkers, and told
them that the mysterious air-man was a fellow countryman. Both
seemed disappointed.
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Lieutenant Bird.
"He can't put on airs with me, after that," Fanning declared.
"Crystal Lake! Why it's no town at all!"
All the same, Claude wanted to find out how a youth from Crystal
Lake ever became a member of the Royal Flying Corps. Already,
from among the hundreds of strangers, half-a-dozen stood out as
men he was determined to know better. Taking them altogether the
men were a fine sight as they lounged about the decks in the
sunlight, the petty rivalries and jealousies of camp days
forgotten. Their youth seemed to flow together, like their brown
uniforms. Seen in the mass like this, Claude thought, they were
rather noble looking fellows. In so many of the faces there was a
look of fine candour, an expression of cheerful expectancy and
confident goodwill.
There was on board a solitary Marine, with the stripes of Border
service on his coat. He had been sick in the Navy Hospital in
Brooklyn when his regiment sailed, and was now going over to join
it. He was a young fellow, rather pale from his recent illness,
but he was exactly Claude's idea of what a soldier ought to look
like. His eye followed the Marine about all day.
The young man's name was Albert Usher, and he came from a little
town up in the Wind River mountains, in Wyoming, where he had
worked in a logging camp. He told Claude these facts when they
found themselves standing side by side that evening, watching the
broad purple sun go down into a violet coloured sea.
It was the hour when the farmers at home drive their teams in
after the day's work. Claude was thinking how his mother would be
standing at the west window every evening now, watching the sun
go down and following him in her mind. When the young Marine came
up and joined him, he confessed to a pang of homesickness.
"That's a kind of sickness I don't have to wrastle with," said
Albert Usher. "I was left an orphan on a lonesome ranch, when I
was nine, and I've looked out for myself ever since."
Claude glanced sidewise at the boy's handsome head, that came up
from his neck with clean, strong lines, and thought he had done a
pretty good job for himself. He could not have said exactly what
it was he liked about young Usher's face, but it seemed to him a
face that had gone through things,--that had been trained down
like his body, and had developed a definite character. What
Claude thought due to a manly, adventurous life, was really due
to well-shaped bones; Usher's face was more "modelled" than most
of the healthy countenances about him.
When questioned, the Marine went on to say that though he had no
home of his own, he had always happened to fall on his feet,
among kind people. He could go back to any house in Pinedale or
Du Bois and be welcomed like a son.
"I suppose there are kind women everywhere," he said, "but in
that respect Wyoming's got the rest of the world beat. I never
felt the lack of a home. Now the U. S. Marines are my family.
Wherever they are, I'm at home."
"Were you at Vera Cruz?" Claude asked.
"I guess! We thought that was quite a little party at the time,
but I suppose it will seem small potatoes when we get over there.
I'm figuring on seeing some first-rate scrapping. How long have
you been in the army?"
"Year ago last April. I've had hard luck about getting over. They
kept me jumping about to train men."
"Then yours is all to come. Are you a college graduate?"
"No. I went away to school, but I didn't finish."
Usher frowned at the gilded path on the water where the sun lay
half submerged, like a big, watchful eye, closing. "I always
wanted to go to college, but I never managed it. A man in Laramie
offered to stake me to a course in the University there, but I
was too restless. I guess I was ashamed of my handwriting." He
paused as if he had run against some old regret. A moment later
he said suddenly, "Can you parlez-vous?"
"No. I know a few words, but I can't put them together."
"Same here. I expect to pick up some. I pinched quite a little
Spanish down on the Border."
By this time the sun had disappeared, and all over the west the
yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold curtain, on the still
sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue
stone,--not a twinkle on its immobile surface. Across its dusky
smoothness were two long smears of pale green, like a robin's
egg.
"Do you like the water?" Usher asked, in the tone of a polite
host. "When I first shipped on a cruiser I was crazy about it. I
still am. But, you know, I like them old bald mountains back in
Wyoming, too. There's waterfalls you can see twenty miles off
from the plains; they look like white sheets or something,
hanging up there on the cliffs. And down in the pine woods, in
the cold streams, there's trout as long as my fore-arm."
That evening Claude was on deck, almost alone; there was a
concert down in the ward room. To the west heavy clouds had come
up, moving so low that they flapped over the water like a black
washing hanging on the line.
The music sounded well from below. Four Swedish boys from the
Scandinavian settlement at Lindsborg, Kansas, were singing "Long,
Long Ago." Claude listened from a sheltered spot in the stern.
What were they, and what was he, doing here on the Atlantic? Two
years ago he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over; driven
into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who
are planted upright in the earth, with only their heads left out
for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had
been tucked away in prairie towns, with their little jobs and
their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships
called in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come
to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so many men and
machines, this extravagant consumption of fuel and energy? Taken
one by one, they were ordinary fellows like himself. Yet here
they were. And in this massing and movement of men there was
nothing mean or common; he was sure of that. It was, from first
to last, unforeseen, almost incredible. Four years ago, when the
French were holding the Marne, the wisest men in the world had
not conceived of this as possible; they had reckoned with every
fortuity but this. "Out of these stones can my Father raise up
seed unto Abraham."
Downstairs the men began singing "Annie Laurie." Where were those
summer evenings when he used to sit dumb by the windmill,
wondering what to do with his life?