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 wasn't Filipinos," began Wickett. "I'd been
in the East a year that time we met, and I put in another year on top of
that in China. A terrible two years. But even two years in the East with
your heart at home must have an ending. After all, the earth can only
revolve so many days in one year, though at times I used to believe
she'd quit revolving altogether, had stopped dead, was only marking
time--'specially nights--and that the astronomical sharps weren't on to
her changes. However, at last she'd rolled her sun up and her sun down
the necessary seven hundred and odd times and I was headed for home.

"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 her arms around
my neck, or anything like that, because she never had bounded
down and thrown her arms around my neck, and wasn't the
bounding-down-and-throwing-her-arms-around-your-neck sort of a girl
anyway; but what I did sort of hope for was that after a polite little
interval she'd turn the red-caped chaps adrift and say, 'Come on, Dick,
let's sit down here in the corner by ourselves and have a good talk,'
and perhaps later, before the evening got too old, go for a stroll on
the long walk, same as she used to.

"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 artill