Part 7 (1/2)

”This,” said the corporal, as the company filed into barracks identical to those they had left two days before, ”is an embarkation camp, but I'd like to know where the h.e.l.l we embark at.” He twisted his face into a smile, and then shouted with lugubrious intonation: ”Fall in for mess.”

It was pitch dark in that part of the camp. The electric lights had a spa.r.s.e reddish glow. Fuselli kept straining his eyes, expecting to see a wharf and the masts of a s.h.i.+p at the end of every alley. The line filed into a dim mess hall, where a thin stew was splashed into the mess kits. Behind the counter of the kitchen the non-coms, the jovial first sergeant, and the businesslike sergeant who looked like a preacher, and the wrinkled-faced corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield, could be seen eating steak. A faint odor of steak frying went through the mess hall and made the thin chilly stew utterly tasteless in comparison.

Fuselli looked enviously towards the kitchen and thought of the day when he would be a non-com too. ”I got to get busy,” he said to himself earnestly. Overseas, under fire, he'd have a chance to show what he was worth; and he pictured himself heroically carrying a wounded captain back to a dressing tent, pursued by fierce-whiskered men with spiked helmets like firemen's helmets.

The strumming of a guitar came strangely down the dark street of the camp.

”Some guy sure can play,” said Bill Grey who, with his hands in his pockets, slouched along beside Fuselli.

They looked in the door of one of the barracks. A lot of soldiers were sitting in a ring round two tall negroes whose black faces and chests glistened like jet in the faint light.

”Come on, Charley, give us another,” said someone.

”Do Ah git it now, or mus' Ah hesit-ate?”

One negro began chanting while the other strummed carelessly on the guitar.

”No, give us the 't.i.tanic.'”

The guitar strummed in a crooning rag-time for a moment. The negro's voice broke into it suddenly, pitched high.

”Dis is de song ob de t.i.tanic, Sailin' on de sea.”

The guitar strummed on. There had been a tension in the negro's voice that had made everyone stop talking. The soldiers looked at him curiously.

”How de t.i.tanic ran in dat cole iceberg, How de t.i.tanic ran in dat cole iceberg Sailin' on de sea.”

His voice was confidential and soft, and the guitar strummed to the same sobbing rag-time. Verse after verse the voice grew louder and the strumming faster.

”De t.i.tanic's sinkin' in de deep blue, Sinkin' in de deep blue, deep blue, Sinkin' in de sea.

O de women an' de chilen a-floatin' in de sea, O de women an' de chilen a-floatin' in de sea, Roun' dat cole iceberg, Sung 'Nearer, my gawd, to Thee,'

Sung 'Nearer, my gawd, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.'”

The guitar was strumming the hymn-tune. The negro was singing with every cord in his throat taut, almost sobbing.

A man next to Fuselli took careful aim and spat into the box of sawdust in the middle of the ring of motionless soldiers.

The guitar played the rag-time again, fast, almost mockingly. The negro sang in low confidential tones.

”O de women an' de chilen dey sank in de sea.

O de women an' de chilen dey sank in de sea, Roun' dat cole iceberg.”

Before he had finished a bugle blew in the distance. Everybody scattered.

Fuselli and Bill Grey went silently back to their barracks.

”It must be an awful thing to drown in the sea,” said Grey as he rolled himself in his blankets. ”If one of those b.a.s.t.a.r.d U-boats...”

”I don't give a d.a.m.n,” said Fuselli boisterously; but as he lay staring into the darkness, cold terror stiffened him suddenly. He thought for a moment of deserting, pretending he was sick, anything to keep from going on the transport.