place was empty.... I sat down in it,” said Eisenstein, lowering his head sullenly.
“You kin have three winks to get out o' my place,” said Meadville, squaring his broad shoulders.
“You are stronger than me,” said Eisenstein, moving off.
“God, it's hell not to have a gun,” muttered Meadville as he settled himself on the deck again. “D'ye know, sonny, I nearly cried when I found I was going to be in this damn medical corps? I enlisted for the tanks. This is the first time in my life I haven't had a gun. I even think I had one in my cradle.”
“That's funny,” said Fuselli.
The sergeant appeared suddenly in the middle of the group, his face red.
“Say, fellers,” he said in a low voice, “go down an' straighten out the bunks as fast as you goddam can. They're having an inspection. It's a hell of a note.”
They all filed down the gang planks into the foul-smelling hold, where there was no light but the invariable reddish glow of electric bulbs. They had hardly reached their bunks when someone called, “Attention!”
Three officers stalked by, their firm important tread a little disturbed by the rolling. Their heads were stuck forward and they peered from side to side among the bunks with the cruel, searching glance of hens looking for worms.
“Fuselli,” said the first sergeant, “bring up the record book to my stateroom; 213 on the lower deck.”
“All right, Sarge,” said Fuselli with alacrity. He admired the first sergeant and wished he could imitate his jovial, domineering manner.
It was the first time he had been in the upper part of the ship. It seemed a different world. The long corridors with red carpets, the white paint and the gilt mouldings on the partitions, the officers strolling about at their ease—it all made him think of the big liners he used to watch come in through the Golden Gate, the liners he was going to Europe on some day, when he got rich. Oh, if he could only get to be a sergeant first-class, all this comfort and magnificence would be his. He found the number and
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