"Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly. While the billows near me roll. While the tempest still is high."
Si shut his eyes lest the tear drops welling suddenly up fall on his uniform, not stopping to think that in the gloom they could not be seen.
Miles away the singers seemed to be when Si caught the first sounds, but as the long, swinging notes reached out in the darkness, squad after squad, company after company, regiment after regiment took up the grand old hymn until Si himself lifted up his not untuneful voice and with the thousands of others was pleading--
"Hide me, oh, my Savior hide, 'Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide. Oh, receive my soul at last."
and the song rose and swelled out and up toward heaven, and stole away off to the horizon till the whole vast universe seemed filled with the sacred melody. As the last words and their music faded out in space. Shorty lunged down beside Si.
"Say, Pard," he began banteringly, "you've missed yer callin'. Op'ry oughter have been yer trade."
"Oh, chop off yer chin music for a minute. Shorty," broke in Si. "In the dark here it seemed most as though I was at home in the little old church with Maria and Annabel and Pap and Mother, and us all singing together, and you've busted it--ah! listen!"
From not far away a bugler had tuned up and through the fragrant night came piercingly sweet--
"I will sing you a song of that beautiful land--"
Then near at hand a strong, clear, musical tenor voice took up the second line,
and almost instantly a deep, resonant bass voice boomed in--
"Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand While the years of eternity roll,"
and soon a hundred voices were making melody of the spheres as they sang Philip Phillips's beautiful song.
"That was Wilse Hornbeck singin' tenor," said Si, as the song ended.
"And it was Hen Withers doin' the bass stunt," returned Shorty.
"You just oughter hear him do the ornamental on a mule whacker. Why, Si, he's an artist at cussing. Hen Withers is. Sodom and Gomorrah would git jealous of him if he planted himself near 'em, he's that wicked."
"Well, he can sing all right," grunted Si.
Just then Hen Withers, in the squad some 50 feet away broke into song again--