The battle-fleet, home from foreign waters, now lay, within a mile-square, emblazoned quadrangle, to placid moorings in the bay. From the after bridge of his own ship Lieutenant Wickett had been observing in silence the night life of the fleet, but when from some happy quarter-deck to windward there floated down the opening strains of a mellow folk-song, he lifted his chin from arms crossed on the bridge top-rail to say to his shore-going friend beside him: "Were you ever able to listen to a ship's band over water, Carlin, and not get to feeling homesick?" "Still the kid, aren't you? How can you be homesick and you home?" "I'm not home—not yet." Just below them the officer of the deck was roaming the quarter-deck. A ship's messenger stepped up to him, saluted and said smartly: "Two bells, sir." "Strike 'em," came the sharp order; and as the two bells were striking, from other ships, from "Why," asked Carlin, "couldn't they strike those two bells without bothering that deck officer?" "Regulations." "They're the devil, those regulations, Wickett." "Worse—sometimes. You can steer clear of the devil if you want to." He paused. "And yet it would soon be a devil of a service without 'em." A sailor stepped up to the officer of the deck, and, saluting, said: "Anchor lights burning bright, sir." A man in a chief petty officer's uniform stepped up to the officer of the deck, whereupon Wickett, sitting up, said: "That's our wireless operator." "A message for Mr. Wickett, sir," came the operator's voice. "You'll find Mr. Wickett on the after bridge," the officer of the deck said; and the wireless man came up the bridge ladder and saluted: "You raised the Clermont, Wesson?" Wickett's voice was eagerly anticipatory. "No, sir, I could not. She has no wireless." "Oh-h!" "But I raised the Cape station, and they reported she passed there on schedule time." "On time? Good! Thank you, Wesson; that's all." "Were you expecting somebody on the Clermont?" asked Carlin, when the wireless man had gone. "Not really expecting. My home is a thousand miles from here, and my pay won't allow of my family travelling around everywhere to meet me. But I like to dream of rosy possibilities, don't you?" A cool night breeze was blowing. Wickett bared his head to it. Presently he began to hum: "And it's O you little baby boy A-dancing on my knee— Will it be a belted charger Or a heaving deck to sea? Is't to be the serried pennants Or the rolling blue Na-vee? Or is't to be——" He turned to Carlin. "When I hear myself singing that, in my own quarters ashore, then I'm home—and not before." He set to humming softly again: "And it's O you little baby girl Athwart your mother's lap——" Suddenly he asked: "Were you ever away from home sixteen months?" Carlin emphatically shook his head. "No, sir. A year once. And I don't want to be that long away again. Were you—before this cruise?" "Five years one time." "F-i-i-ve! Whee-eee! Pretty tough that." "Tough? More—inhuman. A man can get fat on war, but five years from your family—!" He raised his face to the stars and whoofed his despair of it. "My year away from home," said Carlin, though not immediately, "was in the Philippines—where I first met you—remember? The night you landed from the little tug you were in command of and a bunch of us—war correspondents we called ourselves—were gathered around a big fire." Wickett nodded. "I remember. And pretty blue was I?" "Not at first. I thought you were the most care-free kid I'd met in months as you sat there telling about the funny things that had happened you and your little war tugboat. But towards morning, with only the two of us awake, I remember you as possibly the most melancholy young naval officer I'd ever met. You started to tell what a tough life the navy was for the home-loving officer or man, and I had a special reason for being interested in that. I had—I still have—a Wickett smiled, though not too buoyantly, as he said: "Well, on my next cruise to the East I could have added a chapter to the story I might have told you by that overnight camp-fire. And I will now—but wait." A ship's messenger was saluting the officer of the deck. "Taps, sir." "Tell the bugler to sound taps," was the brisk command. The ship's bugler had already taken position, heels together and facing seaward, in the superstructure bulkhead doorway. Looking straight down, Wickett and Carlin could see him, as, shoulders lifting and blouse expanding, he put his lungs into the call. From other ships, as he called, it was coming also—the long-noted, melancholy good night of the war legions. When the last lingering note drooped out, only one ship, and she a far-away one, remained; but from her, finally, on the wings of the night breeze, the last notes drifted—gently, sweetly, lonesomely, to them. "What was keeping me walking the deck or sitting up around camp-fires nights in the Philippines "I went out a middy and came back an ensign—which is very important. An ensign may not rate many high rights in the service, but he does rate a leave of absence. And when my leave came I flew across the bay to the fort, where Colonel Blenner—Doris's father—was commandant. And on the way over I had a thousand visions, dreams, hopes, with of course a million misgivings, fears, doubts, and so on. "When I met her I set it down right away that my misgivings had come true. A fleet of young artillery officers were manoeuvring within shelling range of her, and while I didn't expect her to bound half-way across the drill-ground and throw "But she didn't turn any of them loose. She kept them all about her while she drew me into the middle of them. But poor me! I'd had no service at all in the civilized ports and hadn't seen more than a dozen white women in the whole two years I'd been gone, and of that dozen had spoken to only three, while as for these artillery chaps—! They made me feel like a six-pound shell in a big turret magazine. Any one of them could talk the eye out of my head the best day I'd ever seen. And the day I came back to her wasn't the best day I'd ever seen—not for talking purposes. I looked at and listened to them, and kept saying to myself: 'I wonder if they realize what a lucky lot they are to be able to stay all the time around where civilized women live?' But I don't believe they did. They took everything "In my room in the hotel that night I began to chart a few new courses for myself. Before I left for the East Doris was terribly young and there'd been no other war heroes hanging around. She and her mother were then living in a quiet hotel near my house while her father was off on some board mission in the West. But now it wasn't any isolated little country hotel. It was post quarters, with her father the commandant, and a parade of young army officers in and out of those quarters, with squadrons of two and three-stripers steaming over pretty regularly from the navy-yard across the bay. And she was two years older—a terrible advance, eighteen to twenty, and I'd been two years gone. "You said a while ago, Carlin, 'What a kid you are!' and perhaps I am, though I think I'm an old, old party myself; but about the time I came back from the East that first time I must have been a good deal of a kid. I know now I was. That first night at the hotel, after I'd been to the fort all day, I talked to myself in good shape. And I wound up by saying: 'Well, what do you care? There are forty nice girls between this hotel and the post.' But there weren't forty. There were a hundred, as far as that went, but there was only "And then came the morning of the last day of my leave, and as an ensign doesn't rate any shore duty I knew that next day it would have to be back to my ship for me; though that same ship being slated for a neighborly berth with the North Atlantic fleet, I didn't feel too discouraged. I'd be within wireless distance at least. But I did not want to go without a promise. The night before I couldn't get two minutes together with her—there being a reception in her father's quarters to somebody or other—but when I was leaving for the night she had said yes, she'd come sailing with me in the morning after breakfast. And I left the hotel at sunrise and went down to the boat-landing to overhaul the hotel's little twenty-one-footer to make sure everything would be all ready for our sail after breakfast. "I went through the post grounds to get sight of her window in passing, and there she was—all dressed, and looking out across the bay from their veranda. 'I was just wondering if you, too, would be up early this morning, Dick,' she said. 'Do you think it is going to storm?' And I told her no, and if it did, what matter? And without waiting until after breakfast we went off for our young cruise in the bay. "I was half hoping it would storm, so I could show her what I could do with that little boat. But there was no storm or anything like it. There did come a squall of wind and I let it come, wearing the boat around, and letting the main-sheet run. And she zizzed. And I let her zizz. Nothing could happen. She was one of those little craft with a lead keel that you couldn't capsize, which I explained to Doris, while down on her side the little thing was tearing a white path in the blue water. But Doris's people had been always army people, and she hadn't much faith in floating contraptions. She clung closer to me; and the two of us sitting together and nothing to do but watch the boat go, why—well, we sat together and let her go. "The breeze died down until there wasn't enough of it to be called a breeze, but that was no matter. We were still sitting close together and Carlin nodded in serene agreement. "I always thought you were a good deal of a kid. I hope you always will be. God save me from the man who isn't still a good deal of a kid at thirty. What did you do after breakfast?" "After breakfast I went up to see Colonel Blenner, and found him on his veranda smoking his after-breakfast cigar before he went over to guard-mount. He was genial as ever; except that he put his foot down on an engagement. 'An engagement means a marriage, or should,' he says, 'and how can you marry on an ensign's pay? You with your mess bills and other expenses aboard ship, and Doris with her quarters ashore—you would never meet your bills.' "I agreed with him, but also argued with him, and shook him some, but could not quite upset him. I left him to run back to the hotel to throw my things together. And there I found a new complication—orders were waiting me. I was to "And when I got talking to myself again, I said: 'Doris Blenner, you're a great girl—the best ever; but you're not superhuman. No man has a right to expect a girl to be that. You're too lovable, too human, Doris, to be the superhuman kind. I'll be away in the East Lord knows how long—another two years perhaps—and there's all those army chaps always on the job. We'll just have to be married, that's all there is to that, before I leave.' "I was back to the post in time to join a riding-party after lunch. It was no use my trying to see her alone riding. But after the ride we slipped out onto the ramparts of the fort, and there, the pair of us sitting hand in hand and a sentry a dozen paces away trying not to see and hear us, I told her of my orders and then entered my new plea. 'All for myself, Doris,' I told her. By that time the sun was low behind us and throwing our two shadows onto where the water of the bay came gurgling up against the walls of the fort, and looking down on our shadows from the fort "Colors had sounded when we got back, and the colonel was dressing for dinner; but after dinner I took him out for a walk. Three laps we made around the drill-ground and then, halting him under the clump of willows down by the outer walls, I plumped it at him—what it meant to be away for months and years from your own people. "And he heard me through, and said: 'Why, that's part of the hardship, Richard, in both arms of the service. In my day, Richard——" "'Pardon, Colonel,' I butted in, 'pardon me, Colonel, but in your day the army people never left the country. Even when you were fighting Indians on the frontier, after all it was only the frontier and never more than a couple of thousand miles at the most to get back home. And when you were through campaigning and back in garrison, your people could come to see you. But twelve thousand miles! It isn't as if a man's within telephone call then. And when you're not to see your people for that length of time, there's danger.' "'Danger?' He stiffens up and takes a peek at me. "He said no word till he had finished his cigar. When he does he drops it at his feet, steps on it "'Doris has probably done a lot of thinking in the matter, sir. Why not leave it to Doris, sir?' "'Of course,' he said, dry as powder, 'Doris would be disinterested in this case!' "'Then leave it to her mother, sir.' "'I see neither logic nor prudence in your argument, Richard,' he answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later. "Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old sieve of a Bayport, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,' after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, "And without Doris even changing her dress we were married—in the colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every officer's family on the reservation—even the children—standing by. And the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'—and be sure I thought it was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the Bayport into dry dock and overhaul her." Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three bells were striking throughout the fleet. "Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond the breakwater." Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How long was the respite?" "In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for every flying minute of those ten days." "And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?" "Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather, but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all." "And what of Mrs. Wickett?" "She was to come to me just as soon as I cabled where in the East the gunboat would fetch up for any sort of a stay. But I was never in one spot for long. We cruised from Vladivostok to Manila and back again, never more than a week in any one place. Even so, as soon as I'd saved enough out of my ensign's pay, she was to come—and she would have—to meet me; but before enough months of saving had passed she wrote me. There was a baby coming, and then I wouldn't let her come. I did not want her jumping from port to port in foreign waters before the baby was born, and she would soon be needing every cent of my ensign's pay that I could save. "And the months rolled around and the cable came which told that the baby had come, and that Doris and everything was fine; and I was as happy as a man could be with a wife and boy he was crazy to see, but couldn't. She wanted to come out and join me right away, but I said no. "Well, when the baby was big enough to stand travel she was coming, anyway, she wrote; but I Wickett paused, and resumed: "That was a great night. It was two years and three months since I'd left Bayport. The first thing I did in the morning after turning out, and for every morning thereafter, was to step to the calendar on the wall of my room and block out that day's date with a fat blue-leaded pencil I'd got from the paymaster for that purpose alone, and then, estimating the run on the chief engineer's dope, count how many days were left." Wickett was silent. He remained silent so long that Carlin thought that that must be the end, abrupt though it was, to the story. But it was not that. Wickett was pointing across the bay. "See, Carlin—the flag-ship of the second squadron has just sent out an order for its first division to prepare for an emergency signal drill. And the first division are to have a torpedo drill at the same time. Wait—in half a minute it will be on. There—look!" From the mastheads the red and white Ardois "Life is just like that, isn't it?" said Wickett; "all light and play and color for a spell, and then—pff—lights out." "Maybe," admitted Carlin, "but don't impede the speed of the story. Your ship was racing for home." "Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the battle-fleet at GuantÁnamo, Cuba. We got into GuantÁnamo the day before the Missalama arrived from the North. The Missalama had orders to proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in GuantÁnamo were ordered to her. I was one of them." "Good night! But that was a jolt!" "That's what it was. But that's the service." "And couldn't you do anything about it?" "What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They tried to reach people in Washington—bureau chiefs, senators, influential congressmen—to "And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody have it in for you?" "No, no—not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them—fellows who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could be made to serve a turn happened to be me. "'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up—in three months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but at Callao we got orders to "But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how I used to say at mess that I was never going to believe I was home, till with my own eyes I saw the anchor splash in a home port. But there it was now—the anchor actually splashing in Bayport. I had the bridge making port, and I remember what a look I took around me before I turned the deck over to the executive. From the bridge, with a long glass, I could see above the tree tops the roof of the colonel's old quarters. I pictured him on the veranda below with the baby and Doris waiting for me. I'd sent a wireless ahead for Doris not to risk herself or that baby out in the bay with a fleet of battle-ships coming to anchor. And the baby! I dreamed of him reaching up his little hands and calling, 'Papa, papa!' when he saw me. "Well, everything was shipshape. We were safe to moorings and I was relieved of the deck and about to step off the bridge when the word was passed that somebody was waiting to see me in the ward-room. And with no more than that—'Somebody to see you, sir'—I knew who it "The messenger smiled when he told me. The men along the deck smiled when they saw me hurrying aft. The marines on the half-deck smiled as I flew by them. Everybody aboard knew by this time of my five years from home and the little baby waiting. Good old Doctor and Pay, going up to take the air on the quarter-deck, said: 'Hurry, Dick, hurry!' Hurry? I was taking the ladders in single leaps. At the foot of the last one, in the passageway leading to the ward-room, I all but bowled over a little fellow who was looking up the ladder like he was expecting somebody. I picked him up and stood him on his feet again. 'Hi, little man!' I remember saying, and thinking what a fine little fellow he was, but no more than that, I was in such a hurry. "And into the ward-room, and everybody in the ward-room that wasn't occupied with some of his own was smiling and pointing a finger to where, in the door of my stateroom, Doris was waiting for me. And I dove through the bulkhead door, leaped the length of the ward-room country, and took her in my arms. For a minute, "'And where's little Dick?' I asked at last. "'Why, that was Dick you stood on his feet in the passageway,' she said, and laughed to think I didn't know him. 'But that's because he looks so much like you and not me. No man knows what he looks like himself,' she said, and ran and got Dick, and brought him to me, and said: 'Dick, here's your papa.' And Dick looked at me and he said: 'No, mama, that is not my papa. My papa has no legs,' just as I was going to fold him in my arms and hug him to death. "And—will you still think I was only a kid?—I stepped into my room and drew the curtains, and sat down by my bunk and cried. After five years! And Doris came in, and perhaps she wanted to cry, too, but she didn't. She drew a photograph from her bosom and showed it to me. It was the only one of me that ever suited her, and it happened to be only a head and shoulders, and every day since the baby was old enough she had told him: 'That's your papa, dear, and some day he'll come home in a great big war-ship with guns and guns, and then you'll see.' And the poor little kid, four years and three months old, had never seen any legs on the man in the photograph; Wickett was silent. Carlin asked no more questions. In silence he, too, studied what was left of the night-life of the fleet. Only the white anchor-lights of the motionless battle-ships, the colored side-lights of the chugging steam-launches, were now left. Carlin pointed out to Wickett a green light coming rapidly in from sea. "Another battle-ship, Wickett?" Wickett shook his head. "No. I've been watching her. It's the Clermont. She's due. And I'm half afraid to go and board her." "Why?" "If my wife's aboard, she'll have with her a fifteen-months-old daughter that I have never seen. Suppose she, too, greets me with—She's swinging back—to her anchorage—look." The green light rolled in a great half-circle inshore, and disappeared. A red light curved into sight. Wickett jumped up. "Come on, Carlin, I'll get permission to leave the ship. We'll be there before she lowers the port ladder." "No, but drop me at the landing on the way and I'll see you in the morning at the hotel. How's that?" Carlin saw him before the morning. He was in the lobby of the hotel when Wickett with his wife, a fine big boy, and a lovely little baby girl, got out of the hotel 'bus. The boy was clinging to Wickett's hand, all the while talking rapturously of the trip of the Clermont. With his free arm Wickett was carrying the baby, which was murmuring, "Papa, papa, papa!" Carlin would have known Mrs. Wickett without an introduction or the presence of the boy and the baby. Merely from the way she looked at Wickett he knew that this was the girl who had gone sailing with him in the dawn and become engaged before breakfast. "It's all right," smiled Wickett, with his cheek against the baby's. "This one can't seem to say anything but papa!" Carlin nodded, and whispered: "And you couldn't afford it?" Wickett grinned. "We couldn't; but we did. We always do." "And how about the service—going to quit it?" Wickett stared at Carlin. "Quit the service!" Suddenly he recalled, and laughed, and whispered: "Sh-h—! I'm due for a year and a half of shore duty. But don't mind if I hurry along, will you? I got to get these children to bed." "Go on—hurry—and good night," said Carlin. "Good night, Mrs. Wickett," and handed her into the elevator; and smoked two thoughtful cigars on the veranda and then went inside and sat down and wrote a long letter on the subject of the navy as a profession to the mother of a young lad back home. There was much detail, and then:
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