style="font-size:15px;"> “You’re the bloomingest—” the tall man said.
“It wasn’t my fault,” interrupted his companion. “If you hadn’t—” He tried to gesticulate, but one hand held to the keel of the boat, and the other was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought a battle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered.
The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glided up, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and dragged him into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, a very brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. The oarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale and laid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled man climbed in.
“You’ll upset this one before we can get ashore,” the other voyager remarked.
As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was lined with people. The freckled man gave a little moan.
But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the man in rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body up. On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. A policeman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heaving crowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man in the rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat them indiscriminately.
The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at the throng. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the first finger of amazement levelled at them.
But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man in rubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were as though they were not there.
They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly.
“839,” said the freckled man.
“All right,” said the tall man.
Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The voyagers watched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd, the while uttering angry groans.
“He’s better,” said the tall man, softly; “let’s make off.”
Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of it they found a row of six cabs.
The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had driven hurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the first running sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes and gazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd.
The wanderers made a little detour, and then went rapidly towards a cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up.
“Driver,” called the tall man, softly.
The man was intent.
“Driver,” breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazed imploringly.
The cabman suddenly moved his feet. “By Jimmy, I bet he’s a gonner,” he said, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue.
The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed into the cab.
“Come in here,” he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in, and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put his head out the window.
“Driver,” he roared, sternly, “839 Park Place—and quick.”
The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. “Eh?—Oh—839? Park Place? Yessir.” He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back. As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among the dingy cushions and heaved great breaths of relief.
“Well, it’s all over,” said the freckled man, finally. “We’re about out of it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to me sometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I am rejoiced. And I hope and trust that you—well, I don’t wish to—perhaps it is not the proper time to—that is, I don’t wish to intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and I most sincerely hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those signs in you which shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser man.”
THE END OF THE BATTLE
(Also published as “And If He Wills, We Must Die”)
A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous mission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his superiors; why did any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he would get out of it as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of a dog. All this he said to the corporal, who listened attentively, giving grunts of respectful assent. On the way to this post two privates took occasion to drop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of a deserted plantation. When the sergeant discovered this absence, he grew black with a rage which was an accumulation of all his irritations. “Run, you!” he howled. “Bring them here! I’ll show them—“A private ran swiftly to the rear. The remainder of the squad began to shout nervously at the two delinquents, whose figures they could see in the deep shade of the orchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground and cramming it within their shirts, next to their skins. The beseeching cries of their comrades stirred the criminals more than did the barking of the sergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while holding their loaded bosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved explanations.
Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on his left side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of his waist in many protuberances. “A nice pair!” said the sergeant, with sudden frigidity. “You’re the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose for a dangerous outpost duty, ain’t you?”
The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. “We only—” began Jones huskily.
“Oh, you ‘only!’” cried the sergeant. “Yes, you ‘only.’ I know all about that. But if you think you are going to trifle with me—”
A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind the sergeant’s back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pears to their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to the corporal. “You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when I joined the regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Then a sergeant had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had a very small chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now! Good God! If I report these men, the captain will look over a lot of beastly orderly sheets and say—‘Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seem to have very good records; very good records, indeed. I can’t be too hard on them; no, not too hard.’” Continued the sergeant: “I tell you, Flagler, the army is no place for a decent man.”
Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation which with him had become a science. “I think you
