"Wisht I c'd git off the dock an' rustle up another drink somewheres."
"They wouldn't let us off this dock fer love nor money," spoke up a lithe, blue-shaven marine to me--the company's barber, I afterward learned him to be....
"Yah, we got ter stay here all afternoon, an' me t'roat's es dry es san'paper."
"Where are they taking you to, from here?"
"Manila!... the _Indiana's_ waitin' out in th' bay fer us."
"--Wish I could get off with you!" I remarked.
Immediately the barber and two others, his pals, became intensely, suspiciously so, interested in my desire to sail with them....
"--Tell you wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to it that you get took out to the transport with us, all right ... won't we, boys?"
"God, but this is like heaven to me," exclaimed the barber, as he tilted up his bottle, while the two others stood about him, to keep him from being seen. The three of them drank their bottles of whiskey as if it was water.
"An' mine, too. You go to Manila wit' us, all right,--kid!"
Toward dusk came the sharp command for the men to march aboard the coaster that had drawn up for them. The boys kept their word. They loaded me down with their accoutrements to carry. I marched up the gangway with them, and we were off to the _Indiana_.
I was the first, almost, to scamper aboard the waiting transport in the gathering dusk ... and, to make sure of staying aboard, I hurried down one ladder after the other, till I reached the heavy darkness of the lowermost hold. Having nothing to do but sleep, I stumbled over some oblong boxes, climbed onto one, and composed myself for the night, using a coil of rope for a pillow.
I woke to find a grey patch of day streaming down the ladder-way. My eyes soon adjusted themselves to the obscurity.
And then it was that I gave a great, scared leap. And with difficulty I held myself back from crying out.
Those curious oblong boxes among which I had passed the night--they were hermetically sealed coffins, and there were dead soldiers in them. Ridges of terror crept along my flesh. Stifling a panic in me, I forced myself to go slow as I climbed the iron rungs to the hold above ... where living soldiers lay sleeping in long rows....