eway,' 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; but he had seen his mother cry almost every
time she looked at it, and he supposed that was why she cried--because
papa had no legs. And so the poor kid was waiting to see a man with no
legs."

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