 Book 3, Chapter 11 of One of Hours Camp habits persisted. On his first morning at home, Claude came downstairs before even Mahaley was stirring and went out to have a look at the stock. The red sun came up just as he was going down the hill toward the cattle corral, and he had the pleasant feeling of being at home on his father's land. Why was it so gratifying to be able to say, our hill, and our creek down yonder, to feel the crunch of this particular dried mud under his boots? When he went into the barn to see the horses, the first creatures to meet his eye were the two big mules that had run away with him, standing in the stalls next to the door. It flashed upon Claude that these muscular quadrupeds were the actual authors of his fate. If they had not bolded with him and thrown him into the wire fence that morning, Enid would not have felt sorry for him, and come to see him every day, and his life might have turned out differently. As if older people were a little more honest, and a boy were not taught to idealize in women the very qualities which can make him utterly unhappy. But there he had got away from those regrets. But wasn't it just like him to be dragged into matrimony by a pair of mules? He laughed as he looked at them, you old devils, you're strong enough to play such tricks on green fellows for years to come, you're chock-full of meanness. One of the animals wagged an ear and cleared his throat threateningly. Mules are capable of strong affections, but they hate snobs, or the enemies of cast, and this pair had always seemed to detect in Claude what his father used to call his false pride. When he was a young lad they had been a source of humiliation to him, braying and balking in public places, trying to show off at the lumberyard or in front of the post office. At the end, Major Claude found Old Molly, the grey mare with the stiff leg, who had grown a second hoof on her off forefoot, an achievement not many horses could boast of. He was sure she recognized him. She nosed his hand and arm and turned back her upper lip, showing her worn yellow teeth. "'Mustn't do that, Molly,' he said as he stroked her. A dog can laugh, but it makes a horse look foolish. Seems to me Dan might curry you about once a week.' He took a comb from its niche behind a joist and gave her old coat a rubbing. Her white hair was flecked all over with little rust-colored dashes, like India ink put on with a fine brush, and her mane and tail had turned a greenish yellow. She must be eighteen years old, Claude reckoned, as he polished off her round heavy haunches. He and her elf used to ride her over to the yoders when they were barefoot youngsters, guiding her with a rope-halder, and kicking at the leggy colt that was always running alongside. When he entered the kitchen and asked Mahaley for warm water to wash his hands, she sniffed him disapprovingly. "'Why, Mr. Claude, you've been currying that old mare, and you've got white hairs all over your soldier clothes. You're just covered.' If his uniform stirred feeling in people of sober judgment over Mahaley, it cast a spell. She was so dazzled by it that all the time Claude was at home, she never once managed to examine it in detail. Before she got past his putties, her powers of observation were be fogged by excitement, and her wits began to jump about like monkeys in a cage. She had expected his uniform to be blue, like those she remembered, and when he walked into the kitchen last night, she scarcely knew what to make of him. After Mrs. Wheeler explained to her that American soldiers didn't wear blue now, Mahaley repeated to herself that these brown clothes didn't show the dust, and that Claude would never look like the bedraggled men who used to stop and drink at her mother's spring. Them leather leggings is to keep the briars from scratching you, ain't they? I suspect there's an awful lot of briars over there, like them long blackberry vines in the fields in Virginia. Your madder says the soldiers get lice now, like they've done in our war. You just carry a little bottle of coal oil in your pocket and rub it on your head at night. It keeps the knits from hatching. Over the flower barrel in the corner Mahaley had tacked a red cross-poster, a charcoal drawing of an old woman poking with a stick in a pile of plaster and twisted timbers that had once been her home. Claude went over to look at it while he dried his hands. Where did you get your picture? She's over there where you're going, Mr. Claude. There she is, hunting for something to cook with, no stove nor no dishes nor nothing. Everything all broke up. I reckon she'll be mighty glad to see you coming. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Mahaley whispered hastily, Don't forget about the coal oil, and don't you beat a lousy if you can help it, honey. She considered lice in the same class with smutty jokes. Things to be whispered about. After breakfast Mr. Wheeler took Claude out to the fields where Ralph was directing the harvesters. They watched the binder for a while and then went over to look at the haystacks and alfalfa and walked along the edge of the cornfield where they examined the young years. Mr. Wheeler explained and exhibited the farm to Claude as if he were a stranger. The boy had a curious feeling of being now formerly introduced to these acres on which he had worked every summer since he was big enough to carry water to the harvesters. His father told him how much land they owned and how much it was worth and that it was unencumbered except for a trifling mortgage he had given on one quarter when he took over the Calderado Ranch. When you come back, he said, you and Ralph won't have to hunt around to get into business. You'll both be well-fixed. Now you'd better go home by old man Dawson's and drop in to see Susie. Everybody about here was astonished when Leonard went. He walked with Claude to the corner where the Dawson land met his own. By the way, he said as he turned back, don't forget to go in to see the yoder some time. This is pretty sore since they had him up in court. Ask for the old grandmother. You remember she never learned any English and now they've told her it's dangerous to talk German. She don't talk at all and hides away from everybody. If I go by early in the morning when she's out weeding the garden, she runs and squats down in the gooseberry bushes till I'm out of sight. God decided he would go to the yoders today and to the Dawson's tomorrow. He didn't like to think there might be hard feelings toward him in a house where he had had so many good times and where he had often found a refuge when things were dull at home. The yoder boys had a music box long before the days of Victrolas and a magic lantern and the old grandmother made wonderful shadow pictures on a sheet and told stories about them. She used to turn the map of Europe upside down on the kitchen table and showed the children how in this position it looked like a Jungfrau and recited a long German rhyme which told how Spain was the maiden's head, the Pyrenees her lace rough, Germany her heart and bosom, England and Italy were two arms, and Russia, though it looked so big, was only a hoop skirt. This rhyme would probably be condemned as dangerous propaganda now. As he walked on alone, Claude was thinking how this country that had once seemed little and dull to him now seemed large and rich in variety. During the months in camp he had been wholly absorbed in new work and new friendships, and now his own neighborhood came to him with a freshness of things that had been forgotten for a long while. He came together before his eyes as a harmonious whole. He was going away, and he would carry the whole countryside in his mind, meaning more to him than it ever had before. There was lovely creek gurgling on down there, where he and Ernest used to sit and lament that the book of history was finished, that the world had come to avaricious old age and noble enterprise was dead forever, but he was going away. That afternoon Claude spent with his mother. It was the first time she had had him to herself. Ralph wanted terribly to stay and hear his brother talk, but understanding how his mother felt, he went back to the wheat field. There was no detail of Claude's life in camp so trivial that Mrs. Wheeler did not want to hear about it. She asked about the mess, the cooks, the laundry, as well as about his own duties. She made him describe the bayonet drill and explained the operation of machine guns and automatic rifles. I hardly see how we can bear the anxiety when our transports begin to sail, she said thoughtfully. If they can once get you all over there, I am not afraid. I believe our boys are as good as any in the world. But with submarines reported off our own coast, I wonder how the government can get our men across safely. The thought of transports going down with thousands of young men on board is something so terrible. She put her hands quickly over her eyes. Claude, sitting opposite his mother, wondered what it was about her hands that made them so different from any others he had ever seen. He had always known they were different, but now he must look closely and see why. They were slender and always white, even when the nails were stained at preserving time. Her fingers arched back at the joints as if they were shrinking from contacts. They were restless and when she talked often brushed her hair or her dress lightly. When she was excited she sometimes put her hand to her throat or felt about the neck of her gown as if she were searching for a forgotten brooch. They were sensitive hands and yet they seemed to have nothing to do with sense, to be almost like the groping fingers of a spirit. How do you boys feel about it? Claude started. About what, mother? Oh, the transportation? We don't worry about that. It's the government's job to get us across. A soldier mustn't worry about anything except what he's directly responsible for. If the Germans should sink a few troopships it would be unfortunate, certainly, but it wouldn't cut any figure in the long run. The British are perfecting an enormous, dirigible, built-to-carry passengers. If our transports are sunk it will only mean delay. In another year the Yankees will be flying over. They can't stop us. Mrs. Wheeler bent forward. That must be boys' talk, Claude. Surely you don't believe such a thing could be practicable. Absolutely. The British are depending on their aircraft designers to do just that if everything else fails. Of course, nobody knows yet how effective the submarines will be in our case. Mrs. Wheeler again shaded her eyes with her hand. When I was young, back in Vermont, I used to wish that I had lived in the old times when the world went ahead by leaps and bounds, and now I feel as if my sight couldn't bear the glory that beats upon it. It seems as if we would have to be born with new faculties to comprehend what is going on in the air and under the sea. CHAPTER XII The afternoon sun was pouring in at the back windows of Mrs. Farmer's long, uneven parlor, making the dusky room look like a cavern with a fire at one end of it. The furniture was all in its cool, figured summer critons. The glass flower bases that stood about on little tables caught the sunlight and twinkled like tiny lamps. Claude had been sitting there for a long while, and he knew he ought to go. Through the window at his elbow he could see rows of double hollyhocks, the flat leaves of the sprawling catalpa, and the spires of the tangled mint bed, all transparent in the gold-powdered light. They had talked about everything but the thing he had come to say. As he looked out into the garden he felt that he would never get it out. There was something in the way the mint bed burned and floated that made one a fatalist, afraid to meddle. But after he was far away he would regret. Uncertainty would tease him like a splinter in his thumb. He rose suddenly and said without apology, Gladys, I wish I could feel sure you'd never marry my brother. She did not reply, but sat in her easy chair looking up at him with a strange kind of calmness. I know all the advantages he went on hastily, but they wouldn't make it up to you. That sort of compromise would make you awfully unhappy, I know. I don't think I shall ever marry Baelas, Gladys spoke in her usual low, round voice, but her quick breathing showed he had touched something that hurt. I suppose I have used him. It gives a schoolteacher a certain prestige if people think she can marry the rich bachelor of the town whenever she wants to. But I am afraid I won't marry him, because you are the member of the family I have always admired. Claude turned away to the window. A fine lot I'd been to admire, he muttered. Well, it's true, anyway. It was like that when we went to high school, and it's kept up. Everything you do always seems exciting to me. Claude felt a cold perspiration on his forehead. They wished now that he had never come. But that's it, Gladys. What have I ever done, except make one blunder after another? She came over to the window and stood beside him. I don't know. Perhaps it's by their blunders that one gets to know people, by what they can't do. If you'd been like all the rest, you could have got on in their way. That was the only thing I couldn't have stood. Gladys was frowning out into the flaming garden. He had not heard a word of a reply. Why don't you keep me from making a fool of myself, he asked in low voice. I think I tried. Once. Anyhow, it's all turning out better than I thought. You didn't get stuck here. You've found your place. You're sailing away. You've just begun. And what about you? He laughed softly. Oh, I shall teach in the high school. Claude took her hands, and they stood looking searchingly at each other in the swimming golden light that made everything transparent. He never knew exactly how he found his hat and made his way out of the house. He was only sure that Gladys did not accompany him to the door. He glanced back once and saw her head against the bright window. She stood there exactly where he left her and watched the evening come on, not moving, scarcely breathing. She was thinking how often, when she came downstairs, she would see him standing here by the window, or moving about in the dusky room looking at last as he ought to look, like his convictions and the choice he had made. She would never let this house be sold for taxes now. She would save her salary and pay them off. She could never like any other room so well as this. It had always been a refuge from Frankfurt, and now there would be this vivid, confident figure, an image as distinct to her as the portrait of her grandfather upon the wall. CHAPTER XIII Sunday was Claude's last day at home, and he took a long walk with Ernest and Ralph. Ernest would have preferred to lose Ralph, but when the boy was out of the harvest field he stuck to his brother like a burr. There was something about Claude's new clothes and new manner that fascinated him, and he went through one of those sudden changes of feeling that often occur in families. Although they had been better friends ever since Claude's wedding, until now Ralph had always felt a little ashamed of him. Why he used to ask himself, wouldn't Claude spruce up and be somebody? Now he was struck by the fact that he was somebody. On Monday morning Mrs. Wheeler wakened early with a faintness in her chest. This was the day on which she must acquit herself well. Breakfast would be Claude's last meal at home. At eleven o'clock his father and Ralph would take him to Frankfurt to catch the train. He was longer than usual in dressing. When she got downstairs Claude and Mahaley were already talking. He was shaving in the washroom, and Mahaley stood watching him, a side of bacon in her hand. You tell him over there I'm awful sorry about them old women with their dishes and their stove all broke up. All right, I will, Claude scraped away at his chin. She lingered. Maybe you can help him mend all things like you do for me, she suggested hopefully. Maybe he murmured absently. Mrs. Wheeler opened the stair door, and Mahaley dodged back to the stove. After breakfast Dan went out to the fields with the harvesters. Ralph and Claude and Mr. Wheeler were busy with the car all morning. Mrs. Wheeler kept throwing her apron over her head and going down the hill to see what they were doing. Whether there was really something to matter with the engine, or whether the men merely made it a pretext for being together and keeping away from the house, she did not know. She felt that her presence was not much desired, and at last she went upstairs and resignantly watched them from the sitting-room window. Presently she heard Ralph run up to the third story. When he came down with Claude's bags in his hands, he stuck his head in at the door and shouted cheerfully to his mother, No hurry, I'm just taking them down so they'll be ready. Mrs. Wheeler ran after him, calling faintly, Wait Ralph, are you sure he's got everything in? I didn't hear him packing. Everything ready? He says he won't have to go upstairs again. He'll be along pretty soon. There's lots of time. Ralph shot down through the basement. Mrs. Wheeler sat in her reading chair. They wanted to keep her away, and it was a little selfish of them. Why couldn't they spend these last hours quietly in the house instead of dashing in and out to frighten her? Now she could hear the hot water running in the kitchen. Probably Mr. Wheeler had come in to wash his hands. She felt really too weak to get up and go to the west window to see if he were still down at the garage. Waiting was now a matter of seconds, and her breath came short enough as it was. She recognized a heavy hobnailed boot on the stairs, mounting quickly. When Claude entered, carrying his hat in his hands, she saw by his walk his shoulders and the way he held his head at the moment it had come, and that he meant to make it short. She rose, reaching toward him as he came up to her and caught her in his arms. She was smiling her little curious, intimate smile with half-closed eyes. Well, is it good-bye? She murmured. She passed her hands over his shoulders, down his strong back and the close-fitting sides of his coat, as if she were taking the mold and measure of his mortal frame. Her chin came just to his breast pocket, and she rubbed it against the heavy cloth. Claude stood looking down at her without speaking a word. Suddenly his arms tightened, and he almost crushed her. Mother, he whispered as he kissed her. He ran downstairs and out of the house without looking back. She struggled up from the chair where she had sunk and crept to the window. He was vaulting down the hill as fast as he could go. He jumped into the car beside his father. Ralph was already at the wheel, and Claude had scarcely touched the cushions when they were off. They ran down the creek and over the bridge, then up the long hill on the other side. As they neared the crest of the hill, Claude stood up in the car and looked back at the house, waving his cone-shaped hat. He leaned out and strained her sight, but her tears blurred everything. The brown upright figure seemed to float out of the car and across the fields, and before he was actually gone, she lost him. She fell back against the window sill, clutching her temples with both hands, and broke into choking, passionate speech. Old eyes she cried, Why do you betray me? Why do you cheat me out of my last sight of my splendid son? End of chapter 13 and the end of book 3, Recording by Tom Weiss Book 4, Chapter 1 of One of Ours This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Recording by Tom Weiss One of Ours by Willa Cather Book 4, The Voyage of the Ancheses A long train of crowded cars, the passengers all of the same sex, almost of the same age, all dressed and had it alike, were slowly steaming through the green sea meadows late on a summer afternoon. In the cars, incessant stretching of cramped legs, shifting of shoulders, striking of matches, passing of cigarettes, groans of boredom. Occasionally concerted laughter about nothing, suddenly the train stops short. Clipped heads and tan faces pop out at every window. The boys begin to moan and shout, What is the matter now? The conductor goes through the cars, saying something about a freight wreck on ahead. He has orders to wait here for half an hour. He pays any attention to him. A murmur of astonishment rises from one side of the train. The boys crowd over to the south windows. At last there is something to look at, though what they see is so strangely quiet that their own exclamations are not very loud. The train is lying beside an arm of the sea that reaches far into the green shore. At the edge of the still water stand the halls of four wooden ships in the process of building. There is no town, there are no smokestacks, very few workmen. Piles of lumber lie about on the grass. A gasoline engine under a temporary shelter is operating a long crane that reaches down among the piles of boards and beams, lifts a load, silently and deliberately swings it over to one of the skeleton vessels, and lowers it somewhere into the body of the motionless thing. Along the sides of the clean halls a few riveters are at work. They sit on suspended planks, lowering and raising themselves with pulleys like house painters. Only by listening very closely can one hear the tap of their hammers. No orders are shouted, no thud of heavy machinery or scream of iron drills tears the air. These strange boats seem to be building themselves. Some of the men got out of the cars and ran along the tracks, asking each other how boats could be built off in the grass like this. Lieutenant Claude Wheeler stretched his legs upon the opposite seat and sat still at his window looking down on this strange scene. Shipbuilding he had supposed met noise and forges and engines and hosts of men. This was like a dream. Nothing but green meadows, soft grey water, a floating haze of mist a little rosy from the sinking sun, specter like seagulls flying slowly with the red glow tinging their wings, and those four halls lying in their braces facing the sea, deliberating by the sea. Claude knew nothing of ships or shipbuilding, but these craft did not seem to be nailed together. They seemed all of a piece like sculpture. They reminded him of the houses not made with hands. They were like simple and great thoughts, like purposes forming slowly here in the silence beside an unruffled arm of the Atlantic. He knew nothing about ships, but he didn't have to. The shape of those halls, their strong inevitable lines, told their story, was their story. The whole adventure of man with the sea. Wooden ships, when great passions and great aspirations stirred a country, shapes like these formed along its shores to be the sheath of its valour. Nothing Claude had ever seen or heard or read or thought had made it all so clear as these untried wooden bottoms. They were the very impulse, they were the potential act. They were the going over, the drawn arrow, the great unuttered cry. They were fate, they were tomorrow. The locomotive screeched to her scattered passengers like an old turkey hen calling her brood. The soldier boys came running back along the embankment and leaped aboard the train. The conductor shouted they would be in Hoboken in time for supper. 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 homecoming friends or to bid them godspeed 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. Known in the cobble-paved street below, they watched for a while 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, bathtubs, hospital supplies, bales of cotton, cases of canned food, gray metal tanks full of chemical fluids. Claude went back to the waiting room, lay down, and fell asleep with the glare of an art light shining full in his face. He was called at four in the morning and told where to report to headquarters. Captain Maxi stationed at the desk of one of the landings, explained to his lieutenants that their company was to sail at eight o'clock on the Nkises. It was an English boat, an old liner pulled off the Australian trade, that could carry only 2,500 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 furnished 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 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-birth stateroom. 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-colored 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 gray and pink and blue that might dissolve with a 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 vapor. 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 doved over in crazy patterns that made the eyes ache, some in black and white, some in soft rainbow colors. 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 there because they want to look at the goddess of liberty as we go out. They don't even know this boat turns around a 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 these 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-colored in their gray 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, oh girl. Goodbye, 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 poise, 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. Their pictures had given them no idea of the energy of her large gesture or how her heaviness becomes light among the vaporish elements. France gave her to us, they kept saying, as they saluted her. Before Claude had got over his first thrill, the Kansas fan 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 troopship glided down the sea-lane, the old man still watched it from the turtle-back. That hollering 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. 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. And the Book 4, Chapter 2, Recording by Tom Weiss, Book 4, Chapter 3 of One of Hours. This lever-box recording is in the public domain, Recording by Tom Weiss. One of Hours by Willie Cather, Chapter 3. All the first morning Todd 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 that 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 Byrd, 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 plantle 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 anesthesia. 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 a 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. Under 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 Byrd 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 peeked out at him felt that he must be a person of consequence. He took off his coat with a spread of 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 Byrd, 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. Hello, 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. Byrd, the Virginian, murmured, don't make a rowl, 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 Byrd'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 here from the St. Regis myself in a taxi. I saw it standing on the pier with the officer's 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. There's 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 paths 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 Todd 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 anymore. The Virginian joined them. The Englishman ain't got out of bed yet. I reckon he's been liquor and 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 airmen, lying half dressed in his upper furth, raised himself on one elbow and looked down at him. His blue eyes were contracted in hard. His curly hair disordered, but his cheeks were as pink as a girl's, and the little yellow hummingbird and mustache on his upper lip was twisted sharp. You're missing fine weather, Claude said appably. 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, drawing 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 that 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. You 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 botched planes. There are dangers and dangers. You'll find you've got bloody little information about this war, where they trained you. They don't communicate any details of importance. Going? The young man 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 in the Virginian playing checkers, and told them that the mysterious airman was a fellow countryman. Both seemed disappointed. Shaw! exclaimed Lieutenant Byrd. 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. Seeing them all together, the men were a fine sight as they lounged about the decks in the sunlight, the petty rivalries and jealousy 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 candor, an expression of cheerful expectancy and confident goodwill. There was on board a solitary marine with the stripes of border servers 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-colored sea. It was the hour when the farmers at home drove 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 rattle 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 sideways 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 mottled 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 people 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 Veracruz?' 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 parle-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 forearm. That evening Claude was on deck almost alone. There was a concert down in the wardroom. 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. Poor 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 were 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 had my father raise up seed on the 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? The morning of the third day. Claude and the Virginian and the Marine were up very early, standing in the bow, watching the Ankises mount the fresh, blowing hills of water per prow as it rose and fell, always a dull triangle against the glitter. Their escorts looked like dream ships, soft and iridescent as shell, in the pearl-colored tints of the morning. Only the dark smudges of smoke told that they were mechanical realities with stokers and engines. While the three stood there, a sergeant brought Claude's word that two of his men would have to report at sick call. Corporal Tanhauser had had such an attack of nosebleed during the night that the sergeant thought he might die before they got it stopped. Tanhauser was up now, and in the breakfast line, but the sergeant was sure he ought not to be. This Fritz Tanhauser was the tallest man in the company, a German-American boy who, when asked his name, usually said that his name was Dennis and that he was of Irish descent. Even this morning he tried to joke, and pointing to his big red face told Claude he thought he had measles. Only they ain't German measles, Lieutenant, he insisted. Medical inspection took a long while that morning. There seemed to be an outbreak of sickness on board. When Claude brought his two men up to the doctor, he told them to go below and get into bed. As they left he turned to Claude. Give them hot tea and pile army blankets on them. Make them sweat if you can. Claude remarked that the hold wasn't the very cheerful place for sick men. I know that, Lieutenant, but there are a number of sick men this morning, and the only other physician on board is the sickest of the lot. There's the ship's doctor, of course, but he's only responsible for the crew, and so far he doesn't seem interested. I've got to overhaul the hospital and the medical stores this morning. Is there an epidemic of some sort? Well, I hope not, but I'll have plenty to do today, so I count on you to look after those two. The doctor was a New Englander who had joined them at Hoboken. He was a brisk trim man with piercing eyes, clean cut features, and gray hair just the color of his pale face. Claude felt at once that he knew his business, and he went below to carry out instructions as well as he could. When he came up from the hold he saw the aviator, whose name he had learned was Victor Morse, smoking by the rail. This cabinmate still piqued his curiosity. First time you've been up, isn't it? The aviator was looking at the distant smoke plumes over the quivering bright water. Coming up, I wish I knew where we are heading for. It will be awfully awkward for me if we make a French port. I thought you said you were to report in France. I am, but I want to report in London first. He continued to gaze off at the painted ships. Claude noticed that in standing he held his chin very high. His eyes, now that he was quite sober, were brilliantly young and daring. They seemed scornful of things about him. He held himself conspicuously apart as if he were not among his own kind. Claude had seen a captured crane tied by its leg to a hencoop behave exactly like that among Mahaley's chickens, hold its wings to its sides, and move its head about quickly and glare. I suppose you have friends in London, he asked. Rather, the aviator replied with feeling. Do you like it better than Paris? I shouldn't imagine anything was much better than London. I've not been in Paris, always went home when I was on leave. They work us pretty hard. In the infantry and artillery our men get only a fortnight off in twelve months. I understand the Americans have leased the Riviera, recuperate at Nice and Monte Carlo. The only cook's tour we had was Gallipoli, he added grimly. The aviator had gone a good way toward acquiring an English accent the boys thought, at least he said nesary and distantry, and called his suspenders races. He offered Claude a cigarette, remarking that his cigars were in his lost trunk. Take one of mine. My brother sent me two boxes just before we sailed. I'll put a box in your bunk next time I go down. They're good ones. The young man turned and looked him over with surprise. I say that's very decent of you. Yes, thank you, I will. Claude had tried yesterday when he lent Victor some shirts to make him talk about his aerial adventures, but upon that subject he was as closed as a clam. He admitted that the long red scar on his upper arm had been drilled by a sharpshooter from a German foker, but added hurriedly that it was of no consequence as he had made a good landing. Now on the strength of those cigars Claude thought he would probe a little further. He asked whether there was anything in the lost trunk that couldn't be replaced, anything valuable. There's one thing that's positively invaluable, a Zeiss lens in perfect condition. I've got several good photographic outfits from time to time, but the lenses are always cracked by heat. The things usually come down on fire. This one I got out of a plane I brought down up at Bar-le-dupe, and there's not a scratch on it, simply a miracle. You get all the loot when you bring down a machine, do you? Claude asked encouragingly. Of course, I've got a good collection, altimeters and compasses and glasses. This lens I always carry with me because I'm afraid to leave it anywhere. I suppose it makes a fellow feel pretty fine to bring down one of those German planes. Sometimes. I brought down one too many, though. It was very unpleasant. Victor paused, crowning. But Claude's open, gregulous face was too much for his reserve. I brought down a woman once. She was a plucky devil, flew a scouting machine, and had bothered us a bit going over our lines. Naturally, we didn't know it was a woman until she came down. She was crushed underneath things. She lived a few hours and dictated a letter to her people. I went out and dropped it inside their lines. It was nasty business. I was quite knocked out. I got a fortnight's leave in London, though. Wheeler? He broke out suddenly. I wish I knew we were going there now. I'd like it well enough if we were. Victor shrugged. I should hope so. He turned his chin in Claude's direction. See here, if you like, I'll show you London. It's a promise. Americans never see it, you know. They sit in a y-hut and write to their Pollyanna's, or they go round hunting for the tower. I'll show you a city that's alive, that is, unless you've a preference for museums. His listener laughed. No, I want to see life, as they say. Pumph! I'd like to set you down in some places I can think of. Very well. I invite you to dine with me at the Savoy. The first night we're in London. The curtain will rise on this world for you. Nobody admit it who isn't in evening dress. The jewels will dazzle you. Actresses, duchesses, all the handsomest women in Europe. But I thought London was dark and gloomy since the war. Victor smiled and teased a small, straw-colored mustache with his thumb and middle finger. There are a few bright spots left, thank you. He began to explain to a novice what life at the front was really like. Nobody who had seen service talked about the war or thought about it. It was merely a condition under which they lived. Men talked about the particular regiment they were jealous of, or the favored division that was put in for all the show-fighting. Nobody thought about his own game, his personal life that he'd managed to keep going in spite of discipline, his next leave, how to get champagne without paying for it, dodging the guard, getting into scrapes with women and getting out again. Are you quick with your French? He asked, clawed grin, not especially. You'd better brush up on it if you want to do anything with the French girls. I hear your MPs are very strict. You must be able to toss the word the minute you see a skirt and make your date before the guard gets on to you. I suppose French girls haven't any scruples? Clawed remarked carelessly. Victor shrugged his narrow shoulders. I haven't found that girls have many anywhere. When we Canadians were training in England, we all had our weekend wives. I believe the girls in Crystal Lake used to be more or less fussy, but that's long ago and far away. You won't have any difficulty. When Victor was in the middle of a tale of amorous adventure, a little different from any clawed had ever heard, Todd Fanning joined them. The aviator did not acknowledge the presence of a new listener, but when he had finished his story, walked away with his special swagger, his eyes fixed upon the distance. Fanning looked after him with disgust. Do you believe him? I don't think he's any such heart-smasher. I like his nerf calling you left-tenant. When he speaks to me, he'll have to say, Lou-tenant, or I'll spoil his beauty. That day the men remembered long afterward, for it was the end of the fine weather and of those first long, carefree days at sea. In the afternoon, Claude and the young marine, the Virginian and Fanning, sat together in the sun, watching the water scoop itself out in hollows and pile itself up in blue rolling hills. Usher was telling his companions a long story about the landing of the marines at Vera Cruise. It's a great old town, he concluded. One thing there I'll never forget. Some of the natives took a few of us out to the old prison that stands on a rock in the sea. We put in the whole day there, and it wasn't any tourist show, believe me. We went down into dungeons underneath the water where they used to keep state prisoners, kept them buried alive for years. We saw all the old instruments of torture, rusty iron cages where a man couldn't lie down or stand up, but had to sit bent over till he grew crooked. It made you feel queer when you came up, to think how people had been left to rot away down there when there was so much sun and water outside. Seems like something used to be the matter with the world. He said no more, but Claude thought from his serious look that he believed he and his countrymen who were pouring overseas would help to change all that. CHAPTER V That night the Virginian who birthed under Victor Morse had an alarming attack of nosebleed, and by morning he was so weak that he had to be carried to the hospital. The doctor said they might as well face the facts. A scourge of influenza had broken out on board of a peculiarly bloody and malignant type. Everybody was a little frightened. Some of the officers shut themselves up in the smoking room and drank whiskey and soda and played poker all day as if they could keep contagion out. The actual outbreak of influenza on transport carrying United States troop is here anticipated by several months. Lieutenant Byrd died late in the afternoon and was buried at sunrise the next day, sewed up in a tarpaulin with an eighteen-pound shell at his feet. The morning broke brilliantly clear and bitter cold. The sea was rolling blue walls of water, and the boat was raked by a wind as sharp as ice. Seeing those who were sick, the boys turned out to a man. It was the first burial at sea they had ever witnessed, and they couldn't help finding it interesting. The chaplain read the burial service while they stood with uncovered heads. The Kansas ban played a solemn march. The Swedish quartet sang a hymn. Many a man turned his face away when that brown sack was lowered into the cold, leaping indigo ridges that seemed so destitute of anything friendly to humankind. In a moment it was done, and they steamed on without him. The glittering walls of water kept rolling in, indigo, purple, more brilliant than on the days of mild weather. The blinding sunlight did not temper the cold, which cut the face and made the lungs ache. Landsmen began to have that miserable sense of being where they were never meant to be. The boys lay in heaps on the deck, trying to keep warm by hugging each other close. Everybody was seasick. Fanning went to bed with his clothes on. So sick he couldn't take off his boots. Claude lay in the crowded stern, too cold, too faint to move. The sun poured over them like flame without any comfort in it. The strong curling foam-crested waves threw off the light like millions of mirrors, and their color was almost more than the eye could bear. The water seemed denser than before, heavy like melded glass, and the foam on the edges of each blue ridge looked sharp as crystals. If a man should fall into them, he would be cut to pieces. The whole ocean seeded suddenly to have come to life. The waves had a malignant, graceful, muscular energy, or animated by a kind of mocking cruelty. Only a few hours ago a gentle boy had been thrown into that freezing water and forgotten. Yes, already forgotten. Everyone had his own miseries to think about. Late in the afternoon the wind fell, and there was a sinister sunset. Across the red west a small ragged black cloud hurried, then another, and another. They came up out of the sea, wild witch-like shapes that traveled fast and met in the west as if summoned for an evil conclave. They hung there against the afterglow, distinct black shapes drawing together, devising something. The few men who were left on deck felt that no good could come out of a sky like that. They wished they were at home, in France, anywhere, but here. CHAPTER VI The next morning Dr. Truman asked Claude to help him at sick call. I've got a bunch of sergeants taking temperatures, but it's too much for one man to oversee. I don't want to ask anything of those dude-officers who sit in there playing poker all the time. Either they've got no conscience, or they're not awake to the gravity of the situation. The doctor stood on deck in his raincoat, his foot on the rail to keep his equilibrium, riding on his knee as the long string of men came up to him. There were more than seventy in the line that morning, and some of them looked as if they ought to be in a drier place. Rain beat down on the sea like lead pellets. The old Ankeesis floundered from one gray ridge to another, quite alone. Claude cut off the cheering sight of the sister ships. The doctor had to leave us post from time to time when Seasick discussed the better of his will. Claude at his elbow was noting down names and temperatures. In the middle of his work he told the sergeants to manage without him for a few minutes. Down near the end of the line he had seen one of his own men misconducting himself, sniffling and crying like a baby, a fine husky boy of eighteen who had never given any trouble. Claude made a dash for him and clapped him on the shoulder. If you can't stop that, Burt Fuller, get where you won't be seen. I don't want all these English stewards standing around to watch an American soldier cry. I never heard of such a thing. I can't help it, Lieutenant, the boy blubbered. I've kept it back just as long as I can. I can't hold it in any longer. What's the matter with you? Come over here and sit down on this box and tell me. Burt Fuller willingly let himself be led and dropped on the box. I'm so sick, Lieutenant. I'll see how sick you are. Claude stuck a thermometer into his mouth, and while he waited sent the deck steward to bring a cup of tea. Just as I thought, Fuller, you're not half a degree of fever. You're scared, and that's all. Now drink this tea. I expect you didn't eat any breakfast. No, sir, I can't eat the awful stuff on this boat. It is pretty bad. Where are you from? I'm from Pleasantville, up on the flat, the boy gulped, and his tears began to flow afresh. Well now, what would they think of you back there? I suppose they got the band out and made a fuss over you when you went away, and thought they were sending you off a fine soldier. And I've always thought you'd be a first-rate soldier. I guess we'll forget about this. You feel better already, don't you? Yes, sir. This tastes awful good. I've been so sick to my stomach, and last night I got pains in my chest. All my crowd is sick, and you took Big Tonhauser, I mean, corporal, away to the hospital. It looks like we're all going to die out here. I know it's a little gloomy, but don't you shame me before these English stewards. I won't do it again, sir, he promised. When the medical inspection was over, Claude took the doctor down to see Fanning, who had been coughing and wheezing all night and hadn't gotten out of his birth. The examination was short. The doctor knew what was the matter before he put the stethoscope on him. It's pneumonia, both lungs, he said when they came out into the corridor. I have one case in the hospital that will die before morning. What can you do for him, doctor? You see how I'm fixed? Close on the two hundred men sick, and one doctor. The medical supplies are wholly inadequate. There's not castor oil enough on this boat to keep the men clean inside. I'm using my own drugs, but they won't last through an epidemic like this. I can't do much for Lieutenant Fanning. You can, though, if you'll give him the time. You could take better care of him right here than he could get in the hospital. We haven't an emptied bed there. Claude found Victor Morse and told him he had better get a birth in one of the other state rooms. When Victor left with his belongings, Fanning stared after him. Is he going? Yes, it's too crowded in here if you've got to stay in bed. Glad of it. His stories are too raw for me. I'm no sissy, but that fellow's a regular Don Quixote. Claude laughed. You mustn't talk. It makes you cough. Where's the Virginian? Who, bird, Claude, asked in astonishment. Fanning had stood beside him at Bird's funeral. Oh, he's gone, too. You sleep if you can. After dinner, Dr. Truman came in and showed Claude how to give his patient an alcohol bath. It's simply a question of whether you can keep up his strength. Don't try any of this greasy food they serve here. Give him a raw egg beaten up in the juice of an orange every two hours, night and day. Waken him out of his sleep when it's time. Don't miss a single two-hour period. I'll write an order to your table steward, and you can beat the eggs up here on your cabin. Now I must go to the hospital. It's wonderful what those band boys are doing there. I begin to take some pride in the place. That big German has been asking for you. He's in a very bad way. As there were no nurses on board, the Kansas band had taken over the hospital. They had been trained for stretcher and first-aid work, and when they realized what was happening on the Ankeses, the bandmaster came to the doctor and offered the services of his men. He chose nurses and orderlies, divided them into knight andaceous. When Claude went to see his corporal, Big Tonhouser, he did not recognize him. He was quite out of his head, and was conversing with his own family in the language of his early childhood. The Kansas boys had singled him out for special attention. The mere fact that he kept talking in a tongue forbidden on the surface of the seas made him seem more friendless and alone than the others. From the hospital, Claude went down into the hold for half a dozen of his company were lying ill. The hold was damp and musty as an old seller, so steeped in the smells and leakage of innumerable dirty cargoes that it could not be made or kept clean. There was almost no ventilation, and the air was fed it with sickness and sweat and vomit. Two of the band boys were working in the stench and dirt, helping the stewards. Claude stayed to lend a hand until it was time to give fanning his nourishment. He began to see that the wrist blotch, which he had hitherto despised as effeminate and had carried in his pocket, might be a very useful article. After he had made fanning swallow his egg, he piled all the available blankets on him and opened the port to give the cabin an airing. While the fresh wind blew in, he sat down on the edge of his berth and tried to collect his wits. What had become of those first days of golden weather, leisure, and good comradeship? The band concerts, the Linsborg Quartet, the first excitement and novelty of being at sea, all that had gone by like a dream. That night, when the doctor came in to see fanning, he threw his stethoscope on the bed and said, wearily, it's a wonder that instrument doesn't take root in my ears and grow there. He sat down and sucked his thermometer for a few minutes, then held it out for inspection. God looked at it and told him he ought to go to bed. Then who's to be up and around? No bed for me, tonight. But I will have a hot bath, by and by. Claude asked why the ship's doctor didn't do anything, and added that he must be as little as he looked. Chesape, no, he's not half bad when you get to know him. He's given me a lot of help about repairing medicines. And it's a great assistance to talk the cases over with him. He'll do anything for me except directly handle the patients. He doesn't want to exceed his authority. It seems the English Marine is very particular about such things. He's a Canadian, and he graduated first in his class at Edenburg. I gather he was frozen out in private practice. You see, his appearance is against him. It's an awful handicap to look like a kid and be as shy as he is. The doctor rose, shored up his shoulders, and took his bag. You're looking fine yourself, Lieutenant, he remarked. Parents both living? Were they quite young when you were born? Well, then their parents were, probably. I'm a crank about that. Yes, I'll get my bath pretty soon, and I will lie down for an hour or two. With those splendid fanboys running the hospital, I get a little leeway. Lieutenant wondered how the doctor kept going. He knew he hadn't had more than four hours' sleep out of the last forty-eight, and he was not a man of rugged constitution. His bath steward was, as he said, his comfort. Hawkins was an old fellow who had held better positions on better boats, yes, in better times, too. He had first gone to sea as a bath steward, and now, through the fortunes of war, he had come back where he began. Hawkins had a good place for an old man. His back was bent neatly, and he shuffled along with broken arches. He looked after the comfort of all the offices, and attended the doctor like a valet. Get out his clean linen, persuaded him to lie down and have a hot drink after his bath, stood on guard at his door to take messages for him in the short hours when he was resting. Hawkins had lost two sons in the war, and he seemed to find a solemn consolation in being of service to soldiers. Take it a bit easy now, sir. You'll have it already enough over there, he used to say, to one and another. At eleven o'clock one of the Kansas men came to tell Claude that his corporal was going fast. Big Tonhouser's fever had left him, but so had everything else. He lay in a stupor. His congested eyeballs were rolled back in his head, and only the yellowish whites were visible. His mouth was open, and his tongue hung out at one side. From the end of the corridor Claude had heard the frightful sounds that came from his throat, sounds like violent vomiting or the choking rattle of a man in strangulation, and indeed he was being strangled. One of the band boys brought Claude a camp chair and said kindly, he doesn't suffer. It's mechanical now. He'd go easier if he hadn't so much vitality. The doctor says he may have a few moments of consciousness just at the last if you want to stay. I'll go down and give my private patient his egg, and then I'll come back. Claude went away and returned and sat dozing by the bed. After three o'clock the noise of struggle ceased. Instantly the huge figure on the bed became again his good-natured corporate. The mouth closed. The glassy jellies were once more seeing intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen, brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was almost unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked up wistfully at his lieutenant as if to ask him something. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his head away a little. Mine armor moot he whispered distinctively. A few moments later he died in perfect dignity, not struggling under torture, but consciously it seemed to Claude like a brave boy giving back what was not his to keep. Claude returned to his cabin, roused fanning once more, and then threw himself upon his tipping bunk. The boat seemed to wallow and sprawled in the waves, as he had seen animals do on the farm when they gave birth to young. How helpless the old vessel was out here in the pounding seas, and how much misery she carried. He lay looking up at the rusty water pipes and unpainted joinings. The liner was in truth the old N.K.C.'s. Even the carpenters who made her over for the service had not thought her worth the trouble, and had done their worst by her. The new partitions were hung to the joys by a few nails. Big Tonhouser had been one of those who were most anxious to sail. He used to grin and say, France is the only climate that's healthy for a man with a name like mine. He had waved his goodbye to the image in the New York harbor with the rest, believed in her like the rest. He only wanted to serve. It seemed hard. When Tonhouser first came to camp, he was confused all the time, and couldn't remember instructions. Claude had once stepped him out in front of the line and reprimanded him for not knowing his right side from his left. When he looked into the case, he found that the fellow was not eating anything, that he was ill from homesickness. He was one of those farmer boys who were afraid of town. The giant baby of a long family, he had never slept away from home a night in his life before he enlisted. Corporal Tonhouser, along with four others, was buried at sunrise. No band this time. The chaplain was ill, so one of the young captains read the service. Claude stood by watching until the sailors shot one sack longer by half a foot than the other four into a lead-colored chasm in the sea. There was not even a splash. After breakfast, one of the Kansas orderlies called him into a little cabin where they had prepared the dead men for burial. The Army regulations minutely defined what was to be done with the deceased soldiers' effects. His uniform, shoes, blankets, arms, and personal baggage were all disposed of according to instructions. But in each case there was a residue. The dead man's toothbrushes, his raises, and the photographs he carried upon his person. There they were in five pathetic little heaps. What should be done with them? Claude took up the photographs that had belonged to his corporal. One was a fat, foolish-looking girl in a white dress that was too tight for her, and a floppy hat, a little flag pinned on her plump bosom. The other was an old woman seated, her hands crossed in her lap. Her thin hair was drawn back tight from a hard, angular face, unmistakably an old world face, and her eyes squinted at the camera. She looked honest and stubborn and unconvinced, he thought, as if she did not in the least understand. I'll take these, he said, and the others. Just pitch them over, don't you think? B. Company's first officer, Captain Maxie, was so seasick throughout the voyage that he was of no help to his men in the epidemic. It must have been a frightful blow to his pride, for nobody was ever more anxious to do an officer's whole duty. Claude had known Harris Maxie slightly in Lincoln, had met him at the air-lix and afterward kept up a campus acquaintance with him. He hadn't liked Maxie then, and he didn't like him now, but he thought him a good officer. Maxie's family were poor folk from Mississippi, who had settled in Nemahog County, and he was very ambitious not only to get on in the world, but as he said, to be somebody. His life at the university was a feverish pursuit of social advantages and useful acquaintances. His feeling for the right people amounted to veneration. After his graduation, Maxie served on the Mexican border. He was a tireless drillmaster and threw himself into his duties with all the energy of which his frail physique was capable. He was slight and fair-skinned, a rigid jaw through his lower teeth out beyond the upper ones and made his face look stiff. His whole manner, tense and nervous, was the expression of a passionate desire to excel. God seemed to himself to be leading a double life these days. When he was working over fanning, or was down in the hold helping to take care of the six soldiers, he had no time to think, did mechanically the next thing that came to hand. But when he had an hour to himself on deck, the tingling sense of ever-widening freedom flashed up in him again. The weather was a continual adventure. He had never known any like it before. The fog and rain, the gray sky and the lonely gray stretches of the ocean, were like something he had imagined long ago. Memories of old sea stories read in childhood, perhaps, and they kindled the warm spot in his heart. Here on the Anquices he seemed to begin where childhood had left off. The ugly hiatus between had closed up. Years of his life were blotted out in the fog. This fog, which had been at first depressing, had become a shelter, a tent moving through space, hiding one from all that had been before, giving one a chance to correct one's ideas about life and to plan the future. The past was physically shut off. That was his illusion. He had already traveled a great many more miles than were told off by the ship's log. Then bandmaster Fred Max asked him to play chess. He had to stop a moment and think why it was that game had such disagreeable associations for him. Enid's pale, deceptive face seldom rose before him unless some such accident brought it up. If he happened to come upon a group of boys talking about their sweethearts and warbrides, he listened a moment and then moved away with the happy feeling that he was the least married man on the boat. There was plenty of deck room now that so many men were ill, either from seasickness or the epidemic, and sometimes he and Albert Usher had the stormy side of the boat almost to themselves. The Marine was the best sort of companion for these gloomy days, steady, quiet, self-reliant. And he too was always looking forward. As for Victor Morse, Claude was growing positively fond of him. Victor had tea in a special corner of the officer's smoking-room every afternoon. He would have perished without it, and the steward always produced some special garnishes of toast and jam or sweet biscuit for him. Claude usually managed to join him at that hour. On the day of Tonhouser's funeral he went into the smoking-room at four. Victor beckoned the steward and told him to bring a couple of hot whiskeys with the tea. You're very wet, you know, Wheeler, and you really should. There, he said as he put down his glass, don't you feel better with a drink? Very much. I think I'll have another. It's agreeable to be warm inside. Two more, steward, and bring me some fresh lemon. The occupants of the room were either reading or talking in low tones. One of the Swedish boys was playing softly on the old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. This scotch mist gets into one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I passed you on deck. I was up with Tonhouser last night. Didn't get more than an hour's sleep, Claude murmured, yawning. Yes, I heard you lost your big corporal. I'm sorry. I've had bad news, too. It's out now that we're to make a French port. That dashes all my plans. However, Céline Guerre. He pushed back his cup with a shrug. Take a turn outside? Claude had often wondered why Victor liked him, since he was so little Victor's kind. If it isn't the secret, he said, I'd like to know how you ever got into the British army, anyway. As they walked up and down in the rain, Victor told his story briefly. When he had finished high school, he had gone into his father's bank at Crystal Lake as bookkeeper. After banking hours, he skated, played tennis, or worked in the strawberry bed, according to the season. He bought two pairs of white pants every summer and ordered his shirts from Chicago and thought he was a swell, he said. He got himself engaged to the preacher's daughter. Two years ago, the summer he was twenty, his father wanted him to see Niagara Falls, so he wrote a modest check, warned his son against saloons. Victor had never been inside one, against expensive hotels and women who came up to ask the time without an introduction, and sent him off, telling him it wasn't necessary to fee porters or waiters. At Niagara Falls, Victor fell in with some Canadian officers who opened his eyes to a great many things. He went over to Toronto with them. Enlistment was going strong, and he saw an avenue of escape from the bank and the strawberry bed. The Air Force seemed the most brilliant and attractive branch of the service. They accepted him, and here he was. You'll never go home again, Claude said with conviction. I don't see you settling down in any little Iowa town. In the Air Service, said Victor carelessly, we don't concern ourselves about the future. It's not worthwhile. He took out a dull gold cigarette case which Claude had noticed before. Let me see that a minute, will you? I've often admired it. A present from somebody you like, isn't it? A twitch of feeling, something quite genuine, passed over the airman's boyish face, and his rather small red mouth compressed sharply. Yes, a woman I want you to meet. Here, twitching his chin over his high collar. I'll write Maisie's address on my card. Introducing Lieutenant Wheeler, A-E-F. That's all you'll need. If you should get to London before I do, don't hesitate. Call on her at once. Get this card, and she'll receive you. Claude thanked him and put the card in his pocketbook while Victor lit a cigarette. I haven't forgotten that you're dining with us at the Savoy if we happen in London together. If I'm there, you can always find me. Her address is mine. It will really be a great thing for you to meet a woman like Maisie. She'll be nice to you because you're my friend. He went on to say that she had done everything in the world for him, had left her husband, and given up her friends on his account. She now had a studio flat in Chelsea, where she simply awaited his coming and dreaded his going. It was an awful life for her. She entertained other officers, of course, old acquaintances, but it was all camouflage. He was the man. Victor went so far as to produce her picture, and Claude gazed without knowing what to say at a large, moon-shaped face with heavy-lidded, weary eyes. The neck clasped by a pearl collar, the shoulders bare to the matronly swell of the bosom. There was not a line or wrinkled in that smooth expanse of flesh, but from the heavy mouth and chin, from the very shape of the face, it was easy to see that she was quite old enough to be Victor's mother. Across the photograph was written in a large, splashy hand, Amon Eglot. Had Victor been delicate enough to leave him in any doubt, Claude would have preferred to believe that his relations with this lady were wholly of a filial nature. Women like her simply don't exist in your part of the world, the aviator murmured, as he snapped the photograph case. She's a linguist and musician and all that. With her, everyday living is a fine art. Life, as she says, is what one makes it. In itself, it's nothing. Where you came from, it's nothing, a sleeping sickness. Claude laughed. I don't know that I agree with you, but I like to hear you talk. Well, in that part of France that's all shot to pieces, you'll find more life going on in the cellars than in your hometown, wherever that is. I'd rather be a stevedore in the London docks than a banker king in one of your prairie states. In London, if you're lucky enough to have a shilling, you can get something for it. Yes, things are pretty tame at home, the other admitted. Tame, my God, it's death and life. What's left of men if you take all the fire out of them? They're afraid of everything. I know them. Sunday school sneaks, prowling around those little towns after dark. Victor abruptly dismissed the subject. By the way, you're pals with the doctor, aren't you? I'm needing some medicine that is somewhere in my lost trunk. Would you mind asking him if he can put up this prescription? I don't want to go to him myself. All these medicos blab, and he might report me. I've been lucky dodging medical inspections. You see, I don't want to get held up anywhere. Tell him it's not for you, of course. When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Dr. Truman, he smiled contemptuously. I see. This has been filled by a London chemist. No, we have nothing of this sort. He handed it back. Those things are only palliatives. If your friend wants that, he needs treatment, and he knows where he can get it. Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the dining room after supper, telling him he hadn't been able to get any. Sorry, said Victor, flushing hodlily. Thank you so much. End of book 4, chapter 7, recording by Tom Weiss. Book 4, chapter 8, of One of Hours. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Weiss. One of Hours by Willa Cather. Chapter 8. Todd Fanning held out better than many of the stronger men. His vitality surprised the doctor. The death list was steadily growing, and the worst of it was that patients died who were not very sick. Vigorous, clean-blooded young fellows of nineteen and twenty turned over and died because they had lost their courage, because other people were dying, because death was in the air. The corridors of the vessel had the smell of death about them. Dr. Truman said it was always so in an epidemic. Patients died who, had they been isolated cases, would have recovered. Do you know, Wheeler, the doctor remarked one day when they came up from the hospital together to get a breath of air? I sometimes wonder whether all these inoculations they've been having against typhoid and smallpox and whatnot haven't lowered their vitality. I'll go off my head if I keep losing men. What would you give to be out of it all, and safe back on the farm? Hearing no reply, he turned his head, peered over his raincoat collar, and saw a startled, resisting look in the young man's blue eyes followed by a quick flush. You don't want to be back on the farm, do you? Not a little bit. Well, well, that's what it is to be young. He shook his head with a smile which might have been commiseration, might have been envy, and went back to his duties. Claude stayed where he was, drawing the wet gray air into his lungs and feeling vexed and reprimanded. It was quite true, he realized, the doctor had caught him. He was enjoying himself all the while and didn't want to be safe anywhere. He was sorry about Tonhouser and the others, but he was not sorry for himself. The discomforts and misfortunes of this voyage had not spoiled it for him. He grumbled, of course, because others did. But life had never seemed so tempting as it did here and now. He could come up from heavy work in the hospital, or from poor fanning in his everlasting eggs, and forget all that in ten minutes. Being inside him, as elastic as the gray ridges over which they were tipping, kept bounding up and saying, I am all here. I've left everything behind me. I am going over. Only on that one day, the cold day of the Virginians' funeral when he was seasick, had he been really miserable. He must be heartless, certainly not to be overwhelmed by the sufferings of his own men, his own friends. But he wasn't. He had them on his mind and did all he could for them, but it seemed to him just now that he took a sort of satisfaction in that, too, and was somewhat vain of his usefulness to Dr. Truman. A nice attitude. He awoke every morning with that sense of freedom and going forward, as if the world were growing bigger each day and he were growing with it. Other fellows were sick and dying, and that was terrible. But he and the boat went on, and always on. Something was released that had been struggling for a long while, he told himself. He had been due in France since the first battle of the Marne. He had followed false leads and lost precious time and seen misery enough, but he was on the right road at last, and nothing could stop him. If he hadn't been so green, so bashful, so afraid of showing what he felt, and so stupid at finding his way about, he would have enlisted in Canada, like Victor, or run away to France and join the foreign legion. All that seemed perfectly possible now. Why hadn't he? Well, that was not the wheeler's way. The wheelers were terribly afraid of poking themselves in where they weren't wanted, of pushing their way into a crowd where they didn't belong, and they were even more afraid of doing anything that might look affected or romantic. They couldn't let themselves adopt a conspicuous, much less of picturesque course of action, unless it was all in the day's work. Well, history had condescended to such as he. This whole brilliant adventure had become the day's work. He had got into it, after all, along with Victor and the Marine, and other fellows who had more imagination and self-confidence in the first place. Three years ago, he used to sit moping by the windmill because he didn't see how a Nebraska farmer boy had any call or, indeed, any way to throw himself into the struggle in France. He used enviously to read about Alan Seeger and those fortunate American boys who had a right to fight for a civilization they knew. But the miracle had happened. A miracle so wide in its amplitude that the wheelers—all the wheelers and the roughnecks and the lowbrows—were caught up in it. Yes, it was the roughnecks' own miracle, all this. It was their golden chance. He was in on it, and nothing could hinder or discourage him unless he were put over the side himself. It was only a way of joking, for that was a possibility he never seriously considered. The feeling of purpose, of fateful purpose, was strong in his breast.