"Tell the bugler to sound taps," was the brisk command.
The ship's bugler had already taken position, heels together and facing
seaward, in the superstructure bulkhead doorway. Looking straight down,
Wickett and Carlin could see him, as, shoulders lifting and blouse
expanding, he put his lungs into the call. From other ships, as he
called, it was coming also--the long-noted, melancholy good night of the
war legions.
When the last lingering note drooped out, only one ship, and she a
far-away one, remained; but from her, finally, on the wings of the night
breeze, the last notes drifted--gently, sweetly, lonesomely, to them.
* * * * *
"What was keeping me walking the deck or sitting up around camp-fires
nights in the Philippines wasn't Filipinos," began Wickett. "I'd been
in the East a year that time we met, and I put in another year on top of
that in China. A terrible two years. But even two years in the East with
your heart at home must have an ending. After all, the earth can only
revolve so many days in one year, though at times I used to believe
she'd quit revolving altogether, had stopped dead, was only marking
time--'specially nights--and that the astronomical sharps weren't on to
her changes. However, at last she'd rolled her sun up and her sun down
the necessary seven hundred and odd times and I was headed for home.
"I went out a middy and came back an ensign--which is very important. An
ensign may not rate many high rights in the service, but he does rate a
leave of absence. And when my leave came I flew across the bay to the
fort, where Colonel Blenner--Doris's father--was commandant. And on the
way over I had a thousand visions, dreams, hopes, with of course a
million misgivings, fears, doubts, and so on.
"When I met her I set it down right away that my misgivings had
come true. A fleet of young artillery officers were manoeuvring
within shelling range of her, and while I didn't expect her to
bound half-way across the drill-ground and throw her arms around
my neck, or anything like that, because she never had bounded
down and thrown her arms around my neck, and wasn't the
bounding-down-and-throwing-her-arms-around-your-neck sort of a girl
anyway; but what I did sort of hope for was that after a polite little
interval she'd turn the red-caped chaps adrift and say, 'Come on, Dick,
let's sit down here in the corner by ourselves and have a good talk,'
and perhaps later, before the evening got too old, go for a stroll on
the long walk, same as she used to.
"But she didn't turn any of them loose. She kept them all about her
while she drew me into the middle of them. But poor me! I'd had no
service at all in the civilized ports and hadn't seen more than a dozen
white women in the whole two years I'd been gone, and of that dozen had
spoken to only three, while as for these artillery chaps--! They made me
feel like a six-pound shell in a big turret magazine. Any one of them
could talk the eye out of my head the best day I'd ever seen. And the
day I came back to her wasn't the best day I'd ever seen--not for
talking purposes. I looked at and listened to them, and kept saying to
myself: 'I wonder if they realize what a lucky lot they are to be able
to stay all the time around where civilized women live?' But I don't
believe they did. They took everything as if 'twas no more than
small-arms ammunition was being served out to them.
"In my room in the hotel that night I began to chart a few new courses
for myself. Before I left for the East Doris was terribly young and
there'd been no other war heroes hanging around. She and her mother were
then living in a quiet hotel near my house while her father was off on
some board mission in the West. But now it wasn't any isolated little
country hotel. It was post quarters, with her father the commandant, and
a parade of young army officers in and out of those quarters, with
squadrons of two and three-stripers steaming over pretty regularly from
the navy-yard across the bay. And she was two years older--a terrible
advance, eighteen to twenty, and I'd been two years gone.
"You said a while ago, Carlin, 'What a kid you are!' and perhaps I am,
though I think I'm an old, old party myself; but about the time I came
back from the East that first time I must have been a good deal of a
kid. I know now I was. That first night at the hotel, after I'd been to
the fort all day, I talked to myself in good shape. And I wound up by
saying: 'Well, what do you care? There are forty nice girls between this
hotel and the post.' But there weren't forty. There were a hundred, as
far as that went, but there was only one that I wanted to see coming
over the side of my ship, and next day when I went to see that one again
I set out to win her. And I'm not going to give you any history of the
courtship of Doris. I couldn't tell it right if I wanted to, and I don't
want to--it's our own private story, but she wasn't trifling when she
told me she'd never forget me before I went East. In a week it all came
back, and once more we were walking under tall pines and sailing in a
beautiful bay. In another week it was as when I left her--I had hopes.
"And then came the morning of the last day of my leave, and as an ensign
doesn't rate any shore duty I knew that next day it would have to be
back to my ship for me; though that same ship being slated for a
neighborly berth with the North Atlantic fleet, I didn't feel too
discouraged. I'd be within wireless distance at least. But I did not
want to go without a promise. The night before I couldn't get two
minutes together with her--there being a reception in her father's
quarters to somebody or other--but when I was leaving for the night she
had said yes, she'd come sailing with me in the morning after breakfast.
And I left the hotel at sunrise and went down to the boat-landing to
overhaul the hotel's little twenty-one-footer to make sure everything
would be all ready for our sail after breakfast.
"I went through the post grounds to get sight of her window in passing,
and there she was--all dressed, and looking out across the bay from
their veranda. 'I was just wondering if you, too, would be up early this
morning, Dick,' she said. 'Do you think it is going to storm?' And I
told her no, and if it did, what matter? And without waiting until after
breakfast we went off for our young cruise in the bay.
"I was half hoping it would storm, so I could show her what I could do
with that little boat. But there was no storm or anything like it. There
did come a squall of wind and I let it come, wearing the boat around,
and letting the main-sheet run. And she zizzed. And I let her zizz.
Nothing could happen. She was one of those little craft with a lead keel
that you couldn't capsize, which I explained to Doris, while down on her
side the little thing was tearing a white path in the blue water. But
Doris's people had been always army people, and she hadn't much faith in
floating contraptions. She clung closer to me; and the two of us sitting
together and nothing to do but watch the boat go, why--well, we sat
together and let her go.
"The breeze died down until there wasn't enough of it to be called a
breeze, but that was no matter. We were still sitting close together
and while we sat so, I found courage to tell her what had been flooding
my heart through all those nights and days in Eastern waters. And we
came back to breakfast engaged. And after breakfast--" Wickett
unexpectedly turned to Carlin and said, half shyly: "I suppose you still
think I'm a good deal of a kid to be telling you all this?"
Carlin nodded in serene agreement. "I always thought you were a good
deal of a kid. I hope you always will be. God save me from the man who
isn't still a good deal of a kid at thirty. What did you do after
breakfast?"
"After breakfast I went up to see Colonel Blenner, and found him on his
veranda smoking his after-breakfast cigar before he went over to
guard-mount. He was genial as ever; except that he put his foot down on
an engagement. 'An engagement means a marriage, or should,' he says,
'and how can you marry on an ensign's pay? You with your mess bills and
other expenses aboard ship, and Doris with her quarters ashore--you
would never meet your bills.'
"I agreed with him, but also argued with him, and shook him some, but
could not quite upset him. I left him to run back to the hotel to throw
my things together. And there I found a new complication--orders were
waiting me. I was to be detached from my ship and to take command of
the gunboat _Bayport_--and a rust-eaten old kettle of a _Bayport_ she
was, famous for her disabilities; and I was to sail for Manila next
morning at eight o'clock. Manila! Another jolt. I sat down and thought
it out.
"And when I got talking to myself again, I said: 'Doris Blenner, you're
a great girl--the best ever; but you're not superhuman. No man has a
right to expect a girl to be that. You're too lovable, too human, Doris,
to be the superhuman kind. I'll be away in the East Lord knows how
long--another two years perhaps--and there's all those army chaps always
on the job. We'll just have to be married, that's all there is to that,
before I leave.'
"I was back to the post in time to join a riding-party after lunch. It
was no use my trying to see her alone riding. But after the ride we
slipped out onto the ramparts of the fort, and there, the pair of us
sitting hand in hand and a sentry a dozen paces away trying not to see
and hear us, I told her of my orders and then entered my new plea. 'All
for myself, Doris,' I told her. By that time the sun was low behind us
and throwing our two shadows onto where the water of the bay came
gurgling up against the walls of the fort, and looking down on our
shadows from the fort walls, she said at last she would marry me before
I left, if papa agreed--and glad one minute and sad the next, we walked
back in the twilight.
"Colors had sounded when we got back, and the colonel was dressing for
dinner; but after dinner I took him out for a walk. Three laps we made
around the drill-ground and then, halting him under the clump of willows
down by the outer walls, I plumped it at him--what it meant to be away
for months and years from your own people.
"And he heard me through, and said: 'Why, that's part of the hardship,
Richard, in both arms of the service. In my day, Richard----"
"'Pardon, Colonel,' I butted in, 'pardon me, Colonel, but in your day
the army people never left the country. Even when you were fighting
Indians on the frontier, after all it was only the frontier and never
more than a couple of thousand miles at the most to get back home. And
when you were through campaigning and back in garrison, your people
could come to see you. But twelve thousand miles! It isn't as if a man's
within telephone call then. And when you're not to see your people for
that length of time, there's danger.'
"'Danger?' He stiffens up and takes a peek at me.
"'Danger, yes sir,' I said. 'I've been out there in the islands, in a
tugboat with her engines broken down and she drifting onto a beach where
four hundred squatting Moros with Remington rifles were waiting
hopefully for us to come ashore. Four hundred of them and five of us all
told. But that's not danger, sir,' I hurries on, 'of the kind to scare a
man, though it did sicken me to think I'd never see Doris again, and
that perhaps it would shock her when she heard of it. But otherwise,
sir, that's no danger. But when a young officer goes a thousand miles up
a Chinese river in command of a gunboat, as I was this last time--gone
for months on it--and being commander was everywhere received as the
representative of a great country by all the governors and topside
mandarins along the route. And they haven't our idea of things--a lot of
things that seem wrong to us seem all right to them. They mean no harm.
They intend only to be courteous and complimentary, and so they strew a
fellow's path with the flowers of ease and pleasure--if he forgets
himself, there's danger, Colonel,' I said. 'I sail at eight in the
morning, sir. I'm to be gone I don't know how long, perhaps another two
years, and--Colonel--I want a home anchor.'
"He said no word till he had finished his cigar. When he does he drops
it at his feet, steps on it to put out the light, and says: 'A good
argument for yourself, Richard, but what of Doris?'
"'Doris has probably done a lot of thinking in the matter, sir. Why not
leave it to Doris, sir?'
"'Of course,' he said, dry as powder, 'Doris would be disinterested in
this case!'
"'Then leave it to her mother, sir.'
"'I see neither logic nor prudence in your argument, Richard,' he
answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said
that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her
mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been
telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later.
"Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the
hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached
Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper
wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found
him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars
balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he
says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old
sieve of a _Bayport_, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,'
after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, he
glides into his uniform and comes ashore with me.
"And without Doris even changing her dress we were married--in the
colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every
officer's family on the reservation--even the children--standing by. And
the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the
morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'--and be sure I thought it
was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the
entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven
o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay
the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed
by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the _Bayport_ into dry dock
and overhaul her."
Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three
bells were striking throughout the fleet.
"Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond
the breakwater."
Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How
long was the respite?"
"In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for
every flying minute of those ten days."
"And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?"
"Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather,
but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all."
"And what of Mrs. Wickett?"
"She was to come to me just as soon as I cabled where in the East the
gunboat would fetch up for any sort of a stay. But I was never in one
spot for long. We cruised from Vladivostok to Manila and back again,
never more than a week in any one place. Even so, as soon as I'd saved
enough out of my ensign's pay, she was to come--and she would have--to
meet me; but before enough months of saving had passed she wrote me.
There was a baby coming, and then I wouldn't let her come. I did not
want her jumping from port to port in foreign waters before the baby was
born, and she would soon be needing every cent of my ensign's pay that I
could save.
"And the months rolled around and the cable came which told that the
baby had come, and that Doris and everything was fine; and I was as
happy as a man could be with a wife and boy he was crazy to see, but
couldn't. She wanted to come out and join me right away, but I said no.
"Well, when the baby was big enough to stand travel she was coming,
anyway, she wrote; but I reminded her that before a great while now I
ought to be on my way home. And one day in the China Seas I saw the sun
between us and the shore setting under a thousand golden lakes and pools
and purple pillars, and a home-bound pennant of a full cable's length
whipping the breeze in our smoke astern."
Wickett paused, and resumed: "That was a great night. It was two years
and three months since I'd left Bayport. The first thing I did in the
morning after turning out, and for every morning thereafter, was to step
to the calendar on the wall of my room and block out that day's date
with a fat blue-leaded pencil I'd got from the paymaster for that
purpose alone, and then, estimating the run on the chief engineer's
dope, count how many days were left."
Wickett was silent. He remained silent so long that Carlin thought that
that must be the end, abrupt though it was, to the story. But it was not
that. Wickett was pointing across the bay.
"See, Carlin--the flag-ship of the second squadron has just sent out an
order for its first division to prepare for an emergency signal drill.
And the first division are to have a torpedo drill at the same time.
Wait--in half a minute it will be on. There--look!"
From the mastheads the red and white Ardois lights were winking even as
the illuminated arms of the semaphores were wigwagging jerky messages
from bridge to bridge; on shore, on the water, on the clouds, the great
search-lights swept and crossed endlessly. It was dazzling. Suddenly it
ceased. "Oh-h!" protested Carlin.
"Life is just like that, isn't it?" said Wickett; "all light and play
and color for a spell, and then--pff--lights out."
"Maybe," admitted Carlin, "but don't impede the speed of the story. Your
ship was racing for home."
"Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the
battle-fleet at Guantánamo, Cuba. We got into Guantánamo the day before
the _Missalama_ arrived from the North. The _Missalama_ had orders to
proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in
Guantánamo were ordered to her. I was one of them."
"Good night! But that was a jolt!"
"That's what it was. But that's the service."
"And couldn't you do anything about it?"
"What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as
near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They
tried to reach people in Washington--bureau chiefs, senators,
influential congressmen--to have me detached and ordered home. But next
day was a holiday and the day after was Sunday, and the ship had to sail
by Sunday. And she did, and I with her."
"And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody
have it in for you?"
"No, no--not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service
will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them--fellows
who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and
not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody
with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and
not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody
else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and
somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could
be made to serve a turn happened to be me.
"'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up--in three
months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a
little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore
duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that
thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but
at Callao we got orders to proceed to Manila, and after six months out
that way it was off to the Island of Guam, and from there to make a
survey of some islands in the South Sea. No way I could fix it could I
tell my wife to come and meet me at any certain place.
"But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how
I used to say at mess that I was never going to believe I was home, till
with my own eyes I saw the anchor splash in a home port. But there it
was now--the anchor actually splashing in Bayport. I had the bridge
making port, and I remember what a look I took around me before I turned
the deck over to the executive. From the bridge, with a long glass, I
could see above the tree tops the roof of the colonel's old quarters. I
pictured him on the veranda below with the baby and Doris waiting for
me. I'd sent a wireless ahead for Doris not to risk herself or that baby
out in the bay with a fleet of battle-ships coming to anchor. And the
baby! I dreamed of him reaching up his little hands and calling, 'Papa,
papa!' when he saw me.
"Well, everything was shipshape. We were safe to moorings and I was
relieved of the deck and about to step off the bridge when the word was
passed that somebody was waiting to see me in the ward-room. And with no
more than that--'Somebody to see you, sir'--I knew who it was. The fort
boat had come alongside and people had come aboard--officers' wives and
families, I knew, but not just who, because the boat had unloaded aft
while I was on the bridge forward. But I knew.
"The messenger smiled when he told me. The men along the deck smiled
when they saw me hurrying aft. The marines on the half-deck smiled as I
flew by them. Everybody aboard knew by this time of my five years from
home and the little baby waiting. Good old Doctor and Pay, going up to
take the air on the quarter-deck, said: 'Hurry, Dick, hurry!' Hurry? I
was taking the ladders in single leaps. At the foot of the last one, in
the passageway leading to the ward-room, I all but bowled over a little
fellow who was looking up the ladder like he was expecting somebody. I
picked him up and stood him on his feet again. 'Hi, little man!' I
remember saying, and thinking what a fine little fellow he was, but no
more than that, I was in such a hurry.
"And into the ward-room, and everybody in the ward-room that wasn't
occupied with some of his own was smiling and pointing a finger to
where, in the door of my stateroom, Doris was waiting for me. And I dove
through the bulkhead door, leaped the length of the ward-room country,
and took her in my arms. For a minute, five minutes, ten minutes--just
how long I don't know--but I held her and patted her and dried her
tears.
"'And where's little Dick?' I asked at last.
"'Why, that was Dick you stood on his feet in the passageway,' she said,
and laughed to think I didn't know him. 'But that's because he looks so
much like you and not me. No man knows what he looks like himself,' she
said, and ran and got Dick, and brought him to me, and said: 'Dick,
here's your papa.' And Dick looked at me and he said: 'No, mama, that is
not my papa. My papa has no legs,' just as I was going to fold him in my
arms and hug him to death.
"And--will you still think I was only a kid?--I stepped into my room and
drew the curtains, and sat down by my bunk and cried. After five years!
And Doris came in, and perhaps she wanted to cry, too, but she didn't.
She drew a photograph from her bosom and showed it to me. It was the
only one of me that ever suited her, and it happened to be only a head
and shoulders, and every day since the baby was old enough she had told
him: 'That's your papa, dear, and some day he'll come home in a great
big war-ship with guns and guns, and then you'll see.' And the poor
little kid, four years and three months old, had never seen any legs on
the man in the photograph; but he had seen his mother cry almost every
time she looked at it, and he supposed that was why she cried--because
papa had no legs. And so the poor kid was waiting to see a man with no
legs."
Wickett was silent. Carlin asked no more questions. In silence he, too,
studied what was left of the night-life of the fleet. Only the white
anchor-lights of the motionless battle-ships, the colored side-lights of
the chugging steam-launches, were now left.
Carlin pointed out to Wickett a green light coming rapidly in from sea.
"Another battle-ship, Wickett?"
Wickett shook his head. "No. I've been watching her. It's the
_Clermont_. She's due. And I'm half afraid to go and board her."
"Why?"
"If my wife's aboard, she'll have with her a fifteen-months-old daughter
that I have never seen. Suppose she, too, greets me with--She's swinging
back--to her anchorage--look."
The green light rolled in a great half-circle inshore, and disappeared.
A red light curved into sight.
Wickett jumped up. "Come on, Carlin, I'll get permission to leave the
ship. We'll be there before she lowers the port ladder."
"No, but drop me at the landing on the way and I'll see you in the
morning at the hotel. How's that?"
* * * * *
Carlin saw him before the morning. He was in the lobby of the hotel when
Wickett with his wife, a fine big boy, and a lovely little baby girl,
got out of the hotel 'bus. The boy was clinging to Wickett's hand, all
the while talking rapturously of the trip of the _Clermont_. With his
free arm Wickett was carrying the baby, which was murmuring, "Papa,
papa, papa!"
Carlin would have known Mrs. Wickett without an introduction or the
presence of the boy and the baby. Merely from the way she looked at
Wickett he knew that this was the girl who had gone sailing with him in
the dawn and become engaged before breakfast.
"It's all right," smiled Wickett, with his cheek against the baby's.
"This one can't seem to say anything but papa!"