rtake us, although we doubted not they
all tried.

There grew great good will between us and the stokers. We were
clumsy from inexperience, and they full of laughter at us, but each
judged the spirit with which the other labored. Once, where I stood
directing near the bunker door, two men fell on me and covered me
with coal. The stokers laughed and I was angry. I had hot words
ready on my tongue, but a risaldar prevented me.

"This is their trade, not ours," said he. "Look to it lest any laugh
at us when the time for our own trade comes!" I judged that well
spoken, and remembered it.

There came at last a morning when the sun shone through jeweled
mist--a morning with scent in it that set the horses in the hold to
snorting--a dawn that smiled, as if the whole universe in truth were
God's. A dawn, sahib, such as a man remembers to judge other dawns
by. That day we came in sight of France.

Doubtless you suppose we cheered when we saw Marseilles at last. Yet
I swear to you we were silent. We were disappointed because we could
see no enemy and hear no firing of great guns! We made no more
commotion than the dead while our ship steamed down the long harbor
entrance, and was pushed and pulled by little tugs round a corner to
a wharf. A French war-ship and some guns in a fort saluted us, and
our ship answered; but on shore there seemed no excitement and our
hearts sank. We thought that for all our praying we had come too
late.

But the instant they raised the gangway a French officer and several
British officers came running up it, and they all talked earnestly
with Colonel Kirby on the upper bridge--we watching as if we had but
an eye and an ear between us. Presently all our officers were
summoned and told the news, and without one word being said to any
of us we knew there was neither peace as yet, nor any surpassing
victory fallen to our side. So then instantly we all began to speak
at once, even as apes do when sudden fear has passed.

There were whole trains of trucks drawn up in the street beside the
dock and we imagined we were to be hurried at once toward the
fighting. But not so, for the horses needed rest and exercise and
proper food before they could be fit to carry us. Moreover, there
were stores to be offloaded from the ships, we having brought with
us many things that it would not be so easy to replace in a land at
war. Whatever our desire, we were forced to wait, and when we had
left the ship we were m