HE SEES A LITTLE AND HEARS MUCH
Toward morning, he fell asleep, and when he awoke the vibration of the
engines had ceased, and he heard outside the door of his prison a most
uproarious clatter which almost drowned the regular footfalls of the
soldier.
He had heard linotype machines in operation--which are not exactly what
you would call quiet; he had listened to the outlandish voice of a
suction-dredge and the tumultuous clamor of a threshing machine. But
this earsplitting clatter was like nothing he had ever heard before.
The door opened and he was thankful to see that the soldier outside was
not one of his particular friends. He was silently escorted to the wash
room, in the doorway of which the guard waited while Tom refreshed
himself after his sleepless night with a grateful bath.
The vessel, as he could see, was moored parallel with the abrupt brick
shore of a very narrow canal, with somber, uninviting houses close on
either hand. It was as if a ship were tied up along the curb of a
street. Up and down the gang planks and back and forth upon the deck
hurried men in blouses with great, clumsy wooden shoes upon their feet
and now Tom saw the cause of that earsplitting clatter; and he knew that
he had reached "over there."
Down on the brick street below the ship, a multitude of children, all in
wooden shoes, danced and clattered about, in honor of the ship's
arrival, and the windows were full of people waving the Stars and
Stripes, calling "Vive l'Amerique!" and trying, with occasional success,
to throw loose flowers and little round potatoes with French and
American flags stuck in them, onto the deck.
All of the houses looked very dingy and old, and the men in blouses who
pushed their clods about on this or that errand upon the troopship, were
old, too, and had sad, worn faces. Only the children were joyful.
As Tom went back along the deck, he glanced through a street which
seemed to run almost perpendicularly up the side of a thickly built-up
hill, and caught a passing glimpse of the open country beyond. France!
He wondered whether the "front" were in that direction and how long it
would take to get there, and what it looked like. It could not be so
very far. Presently he heard a more orderly clatter of wooden shoes and
he saw several of the soldiers, who had not yet gone ashore, hurry to
the rail.
He did not dare to do that himself, but as he walked he ventured to
verge a little toward the vessel's side, and saw below several men in
tattered, almost colorless uniforms, marching in line along the brick
street, each with a wheelbarrow.
He heard a woman call something from a window in French.
"There's discipline for you, all right," a soldier said.
"You said it," replied another; "it's second nature with 'em."
He gathered that the little procession of laborers were German
prisoners, and that the long ingrained habit of marching in step had
become so much a part of their natures that they did it now
instinctively.
Then he realized that he himself was a prisoner and was in a worse
plight than they.
He spent the morning wondering what they would do with him and his
brother. Of course they believed him to be the accomplice of his
brother. They probably thought he had weakened and told in terror and in
hope of clemency. He wondered if they had gone through his brother's
luggage yet and whether they had found any papers.
He realized that it seemed almost too much of a coincidence that he and
his brother should have happened on the same ship--and in the same
stateroom, all by accident. And he knew that his coming down from the
deck just after the signal from the destroyer, looked bad. He knew that
back home in America Germans had gone to Ellis Island upon less
suspicious circumstances than that. But what would they do with an
American? In the case of an American it was just plain treason and the
punishment for treason is----
A feeling almost of nausea overcame him and he tried to put the dreadful
thought away from him.
"Anyway, the whole business is a kind of a mix-up," he told himself; "it
don't make any difference what you do--you get in trouble. But I don't
blame them so much, 'cause they judge by looks, and that's the only way
you can do. Anyway, you got to die some time. I'm glad I found it out
and told 'em, 'cause anyway it don't make any difference if they think I
confessed or just found it out--as long as they know it. That's the main
thing."
With this consoling thought he withdrew into his old stolid self, and
was ready to stand up and be shot if that was what they intended to do
with him. He did not blame anybody "because it was all a mix-up." If he
had chosen to save his brother he might have saved himself. The great
ship, with all her brave boys, would have gone down, perhaps, and his
brother would have seen to it that they two were saved.
Well, the ship had _not_ gone down, the brave boys who had jollied the
life out of him were on their way across country now to die if need be,
and who was he, Tom Slade, that he should be concerning himself as to
just how or when _he_ should die, or whether he got any credit or not,
so long as he had decided right and done what he ought to do?
He would rather have died honorably in the trenches, but if doing Uncle
Sam a good turn meant that he must die in disgrace, why then he would
die in disgrace, that was all.
The point was the _good_ turn. Once a scout, always a scout.
No one spoke to him all through the day--not even his brother. He heard
the hurried comings and goings on the deck, the creaking of the big
winches as bag after bag of wheat, bale after bale of cotton, was swung
over and lowered upon the brick quay. The little French children who
made the neighborhood a bedlam with their gibberish and the outlandish
clatter of their wooden shoes; the women who sat in their windows
watching these good things being unloaded, as Santa Claus might unload
his pack in the bosom of some poor family; the United States officers
who were in authority at the port, and all the clamoring rabble which
made the ship's vicinity a picnic ground, did not know, of course, that
it was because the captain's mess boy had made a discovery and "decided
right" that these precious stores were not at the bottom of the ocean.
And the captain's mess boy, whose uncle had fought at Gettysburg, and
whose brother was a traitor, could not see the things which were going
to help win the war because he was locked up in a little dim room on
board, called the guardhouse. He was sitting on the leather settee, his
fingers intertwined nervously, gulping painfully now and then, but for
the most part, quiet and brave. He did not try to talk with his brother
now. He wished he could know the worst right away--what they were going
to do with him. Then he would not care so much.
Outside, upon the deck and quay, he could hear much, and he listened
with a dull interest. He knew that old Uncle Sam was out there with his
sleeves rolled up, making himself mightily at home, chucking wheat and
wool and cotton and sugar and stuff out of the hold, slewing it,
hoisting it, and letting it down plunk onto France! The boys in khaki
were on trains already. He could hear the silly, piping screech of the
French locomotives. His mind was half numbed, but he hoped that all this
would encourage those French people and remind them that before Uncle
Sam rolled down his sleeves again, he intended to bat out a home run.
Sometimes he became frightened, but he tried not to think of what lay
before him. He believed that his brother would drag him down to his own
shameful punishment, but he told himself that he didn't care.
"Anyway, I did my bit. I wish--I kinder wish I could have seen Frenchy
again. But I ain't scared. I just as soon--stand--up--and be---- 'Cause
I ain't much, anyway----. And it ain't--it ain't for me to decide how I
ought to die."