"I'm going across the Inlet with Mr. Ashe," Thompson explained. "Are you
on the Alert?"
"Engineer, skipper, and bo'sun too," the man responded whimsically.
"Cook, captain, and the whole damn crew."
They fell into talk. The man was intelligent, but there was a queer
abstraction sometimes in his manner. Once the motor of a near-by craft
fired with a staccato roar, and he jumped violently. He looked at
Thompson unsmiling.
"I'm pretty jumpy yet," he said--but he did not explain why. He did not
say he had been overseas. He did not mention the war. He talked of the
coast, and timber, and fishing, and the adjacent islands, with all of
which he seemed to be fairly familiar.
"I heard that recruiting sergeant tackle you this morning," Thompson
said at last. "You were standing almost beside my machine. What was it
like over there?"
"What was it like?" the man repeated. He shook his head. "That's a big
order. I couldn't tell you in six months. It wasn't nice."
He seemed to reflect a second or two.
"I suppose some one has to do it. It has to be done. But it's a tough
game. You don't know where you're going nor what you're up against most
of the time. The racket gets a man, as well as seeing fellows you know
getting bumped off now and then. Some of the boys get hardened to it. I
never did. I try to forget it now, mostly. But I dream things sometimes,
and any sudden noise makes me jump. A fellow had better finish over
there than come home crippled. I'm lucky to hold down a job like this,
lucky that I happen to know gas engines and boats. I look all right, but
I'm not much good. All chewed up with shrapnel. And my nerve's gone. I
wouldn't have got my discharge if they could have used me any more. Aw,
hell, if you haven't been in it you can't imagine what it's like. I
couldn't tell you."
"Tell me one thing," Thompson asked quickly, spurred by an impulse for
light upon certain matters which had troubled him. He wanted the word of
an eye-witness. "Did you ever see, personally, any of those atrocities
that have been laid to the Germans in Belgium?"
"Well, I don't know," the man replied. "The papers have printed a lot of
stuff. Mind you, over there you hear about a lot of things you never
see. The only thing I saw was children with their hands hacked off at
the wrist."
"Good God," Thompson uttered. "You actually saw that with your own
eyes."
"Sure," the man responded. "Nine of 'em in one village.
"Why, in the name of God, would men do such a thing?" Thompson demanded.
"Was any reason ever given?"