and as a result I am in much trouble. All day long I have been
grooming myself to look spic and span at the review held in honor of
the Secretary when he opened the new wing to the camp. I missed it. I
lost completely something in the neighborhood of ten thousand men. It
seems hard to do, but the fact, the ghastly fact, remains that I did
it. When I dashed out of the barracks with my newly washed, splendidly
seagoing, still damp white hat in my hand my company was gone, and the
whole camp seemed deserted. Far in the distance I heard the music of
the band. Fogerty looked inquiringly at me and I fled. He fled after
me.

[Illustration: "I LOST COMPLETELY SOMETHING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF
10,000 MEN"]

"Fogerty," I gasped, "this is a trick I have to pull off alone. You're
not in on this review, and for God's sake act reasonable."

I couldn't bear the thought of chasing across the parade ground with
that simple-looking dog bounding along at my heels. My remark had no
effect. Fogerty merely threw himself into high, and together we sped
in the direction of the music. It was too late. Thousands of men were
swinging past in review, and in all that mass of humanity there was
one small vacant place that I was supposed to fill. I crouched down
behind a tree and observed the scene through stricken eyes. How could
I possibly have managed to lose nearly ten thousand men? It seemed
incredible, and I realized then that I alone could have accomplished
such a feat. And I had been so nice and clean, too, and I had worked
so hard to be all of those things. I bowed my head in misery, and Mr.
Fogerty, God bless his dissolute soul, crept up to me and tried to
tell me it was all right, and didn't matter much anyway. I looked
down, and discovered that my snow white hat was all muddy. Fogerty sat
on it.


_July 8th._ As a result of my being scratched out of the Independence
day review I have been tried out as punishment in all sorts of
disagreeable positions, all of which I have filled with an
inefficiency only equaled by the bad temper of my over-lords. Some of
these tasks, one in particular was of such a ridiculous nature that I
refuse to enter it into my diary for an unfeeling posterity to jeer
at. I am willing to state, however, that the accomplishments of
Hercules, that redoubtable handy man of mythology, were trifling in
comparison with mine.

To begin with, the coal pile is altogether too large and my back is
altogether too refined. There should be individual coal piles provided
for temperamental sailors. Small, colorful, appetizingly shaped mounds
of nice, clean, glistening chunks of coal they should be, and the coal
itself could easily be made much lighter, approaching if possible the
weight of feathers. This would be a task any reasonably inclined
sailor would attack with relish, particularly if his efforts were
attended by the strains of some good, snappy jazz. However, reality
wears a graver face and a sootier one. Long did I labor and valiantly
but to little effect. More coal fell off of my shovel than remained on
it. This was due to the unfortunate fact that coal dust seems to
affect me most unpleasantly, much in the same manner as daisies or
golden rod affect hay fever sufferers. The result was that every time
I had my shovel poised in readiness to hurl its burden into space a
monolithic sneeze overpowered me, shook me to the keel, and all the
coal that I had trapped with so much patience and cunning fell
miserably around my feet, from whence it had lately risen. Little
things like this become most discouraging when strung out for a great
period of time. In this manner I sneezed and sweated throughout the
course of a sweltering afternoon, and just as I was about to call it a
day along comes an evilly inclined coal wagon and dumps practically in
my lap one hundred times more coal than I had disturbed in the entire
course of my labors. On top of this Fogerty, who had been loafing
around all day with his tongue out disporting himself on the coal pile
like a dog in the first snow, started a landslide somewhere above and
came bearing down on me in a cloud of dust. I found myself buried
beneath the delighted Fogerty and a couple of tons of coal, from which
I emerged unbeamingly, but not before Mr. Fogerty had addressed his
tongue to my blackened face as an expression of high good humor.

[Illustration: "FOGERTY CAME BEARING DOWN ON ME IN A CLOUD OF DUST"]

"Take me to the brig," I said, walking over to the P.O., "I'm through.
You can put a service flag on that coal pile for me."

"What's consuming you, buddy?" asked the P.O. in not an unkindly
voice.

"Take me to the brig," I repeated, "it's too much. Here I've been
working diligently all day to reduce the size of this huge mass, when
up comes that old wagon and humps its back and belches forth its
horrid contents all over the place. It's ridiculous. I surrender my
shovel."

"Gord," breathed the P.O., looking at me pityingly, "we don't want to
go and reduce that coal pile, we want to enlarge it."

"Oh!" I replied, stunned, "I didn't quite understand. I thought you
wanted to make it smaller, so I've been trying to shovel it away all
afternoon."

"You shouldn't oughter have done that," replied the P.O. as if he were
talking to an idiot, "I suppose you've been shoveling her down hill
all day?"

I admitted that I had.

"You see," I added engagingly, "I began with trying to shovel her up
hill, but the old stuff kept on rolling down on me, so I drew the
natural conclusion that I'd better shovel her down hill. It seemed
more reasonable and--"

"Easier," suggested the P.O.

"Yes," I agreed.

There was a faraway expression in his eyes when he next spoke. "I'd
recommend you for an ineptitude discharge," he said, "if it wasn't for
the fact that I have more consideration for the civilian population.
I'd gladly put you in the brig for life if I could feel sure you
wouldn't injure it in some way. The only thing left for me to do is to
make you promise that you'll keep away from our coal pile and swear
never to lay violent hands on it again. You'll spoil it."

I gazed up at the monumental mass of coal rearing itself like a
dark-town Matterhorn above my head and swore fervently never to molest
it again.

"Go back to your outfit and get washed and tell your P.O. for me that
you can't come here no more, and," he added, as I was about to depart,
"take that unusual looking bit of animal life with you--it's all
wrong. Police his body or he'll ruin some of your pals' white pants
and they wouldn't like that at all."

I feared they wouldn't.

"Yes, sir," I replied in a crumpled voice, "Much obliged, sir."

"Please go away now," he said quietly, "or I think I might do you an
injury." He was fingering the shovel nervously as he spoke. Thus
Fogerty and I departed, banished even from our dusky St. Helena.


_July 9th._ Working on the theory of opposites, I was next placed as a
waiter in the Chief Petty Officer's Mess over in the First Regiment. I
wasn't so good here, it seems. There was something wrong with my
technique. The coal pile had ruined me for delicate work. I
continually kept mistaking the plate in my hand for a shovel, a
mistake which led to disastrous results. I will say this for the
chiefs, however--they were as clean-cut, hard-eating a body of men as
I have ever met. It was a pleasure to feed them, particularly so in
the case of one chief, a venerable gentleman, who seemed both by his
bearing and the number of stripes on his sleeve to be the dean of the
mess. He ate quietly, composedly and to the point, and after I had
spilled a couple of plates of rations on several of the other chiefs'
laps he suggested that I call it a day and be withdrawn in favor of
one whose services to his country were not so invaluable as mine.
Appreciating his delicacy I withdrew, but only to be sent out on
another job that defies description. Even here I quickly demonstrated
my unfitness and have consequently been incorporated once more into
the body of my regiment.


_July 10th._ I had the most terrible experience in mess to-day when a
guy having eaten more rapidly than I attempted to take my ration. When
I told him he shouldn't do it he merely laughed brutally and kicked me
an awful whack on the shin. This injury, together with the sight of
witnessing my food about to be crammed down his predatory maw,
succeeded in bringing all my latent patriotism to the fore and I fell
upon him with a desperation bred of hunger. We proceeded to mill it up
in a rather futile, childish manner until the Master-at-arms suggested
in a certain way he has that we go away to somewhere else. Hereafter
if any one asks if I did any actual fighting in this war I am going to
say, "Yes, I fought like hell many hard and long battles in camp for
my ration," which will be true.

"Say, buddy," said my opponent, after we had landed quite violently on
the exterior of the Mess Hall, "you didn't git no food at all, did
yer?"

"No," I replied bitterly; "at all is right."

He looked at me for a moment in a strange, studying manner, then began
laughing softly to himself.

"I don't know what made me do it," he said more to himself than to me.
"I wasn't hungry no more. I didn't _really_ want it. I wonder what
makes a guy brutal? Guess he sort of has a feelin' to experiment with
himself and other folks."

"I wish you'd tried that experiment on some one else," I replied,
thinking tenderly of my shin.

"Sometimes I feel so doggon strong and mean," he continued, "I just
can't keep from doing things I don't naturally feel like doing. I
guess I'm sort of an animal."

"Say," I asked him in surprise, "if you keep talking about yourself
that way I won't be able to call you all the names I am carefully
preparing at this moment."

He peered earnestly down on me for a space.

"Does my face make you talk that way?" I asked, feeling dimly and
uncomfortably that it did.

"Yes," he replied, "it's your face, your foolish looking face. I can't
help feeling sorry for it and your funny empty little belly."

"You're breaking me down," I answered; "I can't stand kindness."

"I ain't no bully," he said fiercely, as if he was about to strike me.
"I ain't no bully," he repeated, "I'll tell you that."

"No, sir," I replied soothingly, keeping on the alert, "you ain't no
bully."

Here he took me by the arm and dragged me along with him.

"Come on, buddy," he said, "I'm going to take you to the canteen and
feed you. I'm going to do it, I swear to God."

So he fed me. Stacks and stacks of stuff he forced on me until the
flesh rebelled, after which he put things in my pockets, repeating
every little while, "I ain't no bully, I'll tell you that, I ain't no
bully." He spent most of his money, I reckon, but I did not try to
stop him. He wanted to do it and I guess it made him feel better.
After the orgy I took him around and let him pat Mr. Fogerty. He
seemed to like this. Fogerty took it in good part.


_July 11th._ There's something about Wednesday afternoons that doesn't
appeal to me. First they make you go away and dress yourself up nice
and clean and then they look you over and make you feel nearly as
childish as you look. Then they put a gun into your hand that is much
too heavy for comfort and make you do all sorts of ridiculous things
with this gun, after which you fall in with numerous thousands of
other men who have been subjected to the same treatment, and together
we all go trotting past any number of officers, who look you over with
uncanny earnestness through eyes that seem to perceive the remotest
defect with fiendish accuracy. Then we all trot home again and call it
a review.

This is all very well for some people, but not for me. I'm a little
too self-conscious. I have always the feeling that I am the review,
that it has been staged particularly for my discomforture, and that
every officer in camp is on the lookout for any slight irregularity in
my clothes or conduct. In this they have little difficulty. I assist
them greatly myself. To-day, for instance:

Item one: Dropped my gun.

Item two: Talked in ranks. I asked the guy next to me how he would
like to go to a place and he said that he'd see me there first.

Item three: Failed to follow the guide.

Item four: Didn't mark time correctly.

Item five: Was in step once.

Now all of these things are trifling in themselves, but taken en
mass, as it were, it leads up to a sizable display; at least, so I was
told in words that denied any other interpretation by my P.O. and
several pals of his. After the review our regimental commander lined
us up and addressed us as follows:

"About that review to-day," he began, "it was terrible" (long,
dramatic pause). "It was probably the worst review I have ever seen
(several P.O.'s glanced at me reproachfully), not only that," he
continued, "but it was the worst review that anybody has ever seen.
Anybody! (shouted) without exception! (shouted) awful review! (pause)
Terrible!"

We steadied in the ranks and waited for our doom.

"It will never be so again," he continued, "I'll see to that. I'll
drill ye myself. If you have to get up at four o'clock in the morning
to drill in order to meet your classes, I'll see that ye do it.
Dropping guns! (pause). Talking in ranks! (pause). Out-o-step
(terrible pause). Marking time wrong. Everything wrong! Company
commanders, take 'em away."

We were took.

"All of those things," said my P.O. in a trembling voice, "you did.
All of 'em. Now the old man's sore on us and he's going to give us
hell, and I'm going to do the same by you."

"Shoot, dearie," says I, with the desperate indifference of a man who
has nothing left to lose, "I wouldn't feel natural if you didn't."

And in my hammock that night I thought of another thing I might have
said if it had occurred to me in time. I might have said, "Hell is the
only thing you know how to give and you're generous with that because
it's free."

But I guess after all it's just as well I didn't.


_August 1st._ Mr. Fogerty has returned aboard. My worst fears are
realized. For a long time he has been irritable and uncommunicative
with me and has indulged in sly, furtive little tricks unbecoming to a
dog of the service. I have suspected that he was concealing a love
affair from me. This it appears he has been doing and his guilt is
heavy upon him. I realize now for the first time and not without a
sharp maternal pang that he has reached an age at which he must make
decisions for himself. I can no longer follow him out into the world
upon his nocturnal exploits. His entire confidence is not mine. I must
be content to share a part of his heart instead of the whole of it.
Like father like son, I suppose. However, I see no reason for him to
put on such airs. On his return from City Island this time he had
somehow contrived to get himself completely shaved up to the
shoulders. The result is startling. Fogerty looks extremely
aristocratic but a trifle foppish. However, he seems to consider
himself the only real four-footed dog in camp. This is a trifle boring
from a dog who has never hesitated to steal from the galley anything
that wasn't a permanent fixture. I can't help but feel sorry for him
though when I see that far-away look in his eyes. Sad days I fear are
in store for him. Ah, well, we're only young once.


_August 3d._ "Well, now, son," he was saying, "mind me when I tell yer
that I'm not claiming as to ever have seen a mermaid, but what I am
saying is this and that is if anybody has ever seen one of them things
I'm that man. I'm not making no false claims, however, none
whatsoever."

I carefully placed my shovel against the wheelbarrow and seating
myself upon a stump prepared to listen to my companion. He was a chief
of many cruises and for some unaccountable reason had fixed on me as
being a suitable recipient for his discourse. One more hash mark on
his arm would have made him look like a convict. I listened and in the
meanwhile many mounds of sand urgently in need of shoveling remained
undisturbed. Upon this sand I occasionally cast a reflective and
apprehensive eye. The chief, noticing this, nudged me in the ribs with
an angular elbow.

"Don't mind that, sonny," he said, "I'll pump the fear-o'-God into the
heart of any P.O. what endeavors to disturb you. Trust me."

I did.

"Now getting back to this mermaid," he began in a confidential voice,
"what I say as I didn't claim to have saw. It happened this way and
what I'm telling you, sonny, is the plain, unvarnished facts of the
case, take 'em or leave 'em as you will. They happened and I'm here to
tell the whole world so."

"I have every confidence in you, chief," I replied mildly.

"It is well you have," he growled, scanning my face suspiciously.
"It's well you have, you louse."

"Why, chief," I exclaimed in an aggrieved voice, "isn't that rather an
unappetizing word to apply to a fellow creature?"

"Mayhap, young feller," he replied, "mayhap. I ain't no deep sea
dictionary diver, I ain't, but all this has got nothing to do with
what I was about to tell you. It all happened after this manner,
neither no more nor no less."

He cleared his throat and gazed with undisguised hostility across the
parade ground. Thus he began:

"It was during the summer of 1888, some thirty odd years ago," quoth
he. "I was a bit young then, but never such a whey face as you,
certainly not."

"Positively," said I, in hearty agreement.

"At that time," he continued, not noticing my remark, "I was resting
easy on a soft job between cruises as night watchman on one of them
P.O. docks at Dover. The work warn't hard, but it was hard enough. I
would never have taken it had it not been for the unpleasant fact that
owing to some little trouble I had gotten into at one of the pubs my
wife was in one of her nasty, brow-beating moods. At these times the
solitude and the stars together with the grateful companionship of a
couple of buckets of beer was greatly to be preferred to my little old
home. So I took the job and accordingly spent my nights sitting with
my back to a pile, my legs comfortably stretched out along the rim of
the dock and a bucket of beer within easy reach."

"Could anything be fairer than that?" said I.

"Nothing," said he, and continued. "Well, one night as I was sitting
there looking down in the water as a man does when his mind is empty
and his body well disposed, I found myself gazing down into two
glowing pools that weren't the reflections of stars. Above these two
flecks of light was perched a battered old leghorn hat after the style
affected in the music halls of those days. Floating out back of this
hat on the water was a long wavery coil of filmy hair, the face was
shaded, but two long slim arms were thrust out of the water toward me,
and following these arms down a bit I was shocked and surprised to
find that further than the hat the young lady below me was apparently
innocent of garments. Now I believe in going out with the boys when
the occasion demands and making a bit of a time of it, but my folks
have always been good, honest church people and believers in good,
strong, modest clothing and plenty of 'em. I have always followed
their example."

"Reluctantly and at a great distance," said I.

"Not at all," said he and continued. "So when I sees the condition the
young lady was in I was naturally very much put out and I didn't
hesitate telling her so.

"'Go home,' says I, 'and put your clothes on. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself--a great big girl like you.'

"'Aw, pipe down, old grizzle face,' says she; 'wot have you got in the
bucket?' And if you will believe me she began raising herself out of
the water. 'Give me some,' says she.

"'Stop,' I cries out exasperated; 'stop where you are; you've gone far
enough. For shame.'

"'I'll come all the way out,' says she, laughing, 'unless you give me
some of wot you got in that bucket.'

"'Shame,' I repeated, 'ain't you got no sense of decency?'

"'None wot so ever,' she replied, 'but I'm awfully thirsty. Gimme a
drink or out I'll come.'

"Now you can see for yourself that I couldn't afford to have a woman
in her get-up sitting around with me on the end of a dock, being
married as I was and my folks all good honest church folks, and bright
moon shining in the sky to boot, so I was just naturally forced to
give in to the brazen thing and reach her down the bucket, a full one
at that. It came back empty and she was forwarder than ever.

"'Say,' she cries out, swimming around most exasperatingly, 'you're a
nice old party. What do your folks know you by?'

"I told her my name was none of her business and that I was a married
man and that I wished she'd go away and let me go on with my night
watching.

"'I'm married too,' says she, in a conversational tone, 'to an awful
mess. You're pretty fuzzy, but I'd swap him for you any day. Come on
into the sea with me and we'll swim down to Gold Fish Arms and stick
around until we get a drink. I know lots of the boys down there. There
ain't no liquor dealers where I come from,' and with this if you will
believe me she flips a bucket full of water into my lap with the
neatest little scale spangled tail you ever seen.

"'No,' says I, 'my mind's made up. I ain't agoing to go swimming
around with no semi-stewed, altogether nude mermaid. It ain't right.
It ain't Christian.'

"'I got a hat,' says she reflectively, 'and I ain't so stewed but wot
I can't swim. Wot do you think of that hat? One of the boys stole it
from his old woman and gave it to me. Come on, let's take a swim.'

"'No,' says I, 'I ain't agoing.'

"'Just 'cause I ain't all dolled up in a lot of clothes?' says she.

"'Partly,' says I, 'and partly because you are a mermaid. I ain't
agoing messing around through the water with no mermaid. I ain't never
done it and I ain't agoing to begin it now.'

"'If I get some clothes on and dress all up pretty, will you go
swimming with me then?' she asks pleadingly.

"'Well that's another thing,' says I, noncommittal like.

"'All right,' says she, 'gimme something out of that other bucket and
I'll go away. Come on, old sweetheart,' and she held up her arms to
me.

"Well, I gave her the bucket and true to form she emptied it. Then she
began to argue and plead with me until I nearly lost an ear.

"'No,' I yells at her, 'I ain't agoing to spend the night arguing with
a drunken mermaid. Go away, now; you said you would.'

"'All right, old love,' she replies good-naturedly, 'but I'll see you
again some time. I ain't ever going home again. I hate it down there.'
And off she swims in an unsteady manner in the direction of the Gold
Fish Arms. She was singing and shouting something terrible.

"'Oh, bury me not on the lonesome prairie
Where the wild coyotes howl o'er me,'

was the song she sang and I wondered where she had ever picked it up.

"Well," continued the chief, "to cast a sheep shank in a long line,
these visits kept up every evening until I was pretty near drove
distracted. Along she'd come about sun-down and stick around devilin'
me and drinking up all my grog. After a while she began calling for
gin and kept threatening me until I just had to satisfy her. She also
made me buy her a brush and comb, a mouth organ and a pair of
spectacles, together with a lot of other stuff on the strength of the
fact that if I refused she would make a scene. In this way that doggon
mermaid continually kept me broke, for my wage warn't enough to make
me heavy and I had my home to support.

"'Don't you ever go home?' I asked her one night.

"'No,' she replied, 'I ain't ever going back home. I don't like it
down there. There ain't no liquor dealers.'

"'But your husband,' exclaims I. 'What of him?'

"'I know,' says she, 'but I don't like him and I'm off my baby, too.
It squints,' says she.

"'But all babies squint,' says I.

"'Mine shouldn't,' says she. 'It ain't right.'

"Then one night an awful thing happened. My wife came down to the dock
to find out how I spent all my money. It was a bright moon-lit night
and this lost soul of a mermaid was hanging around, particularly
jilled and entreating. I was just in the act of passing her down the
gin flask and she was saying to me, 'Come on down, old love; you know
you're crazy about me,' when all of a sudden I heard an infuriated
shriek behind me and saw my wife leaning over the dock shaking an
umbrella at this huzzy of a mermaid. Oh, son," broke off the Chief,
"if you only knew the uncontrolled violence and fury of two contending
women. Nothing you meet on shipboard will ever equal it. I was
speechless, rocked in the surf of a tumult of words. And in the midst
of it all what should happen but the husband of the mermaid pops out
of the water with a funny little bit of a merbaby in his arms.

"'Go home at once, sir,' screams my wife, 'and put on your clothes.'

"'I will,' he shouts back, 'if my wife will come along with me.'

"He was a weazened up little old man with a crooked back. Not very
prepossessing. I could hardly blame his wife.

"'So that bit of stuff is your wife, is it?' cries out my old lady,
and with that she began telling him her past.

"'I know it,' says the little old merman at last, almost crying; 'I
know it, but I ain't got no control over her whatsoever. I've been
trying to get her to come home for the last fortnight, but she just
won't leave off going around with the sailors. The whole beach is
ashamed of her. It's general talk down below. What can I do? The
little old coral house is going to wrack and ruin and the baby ain't
been properly took care of since she left. What am I going to do,
madam? What am I going to do? I'm well nigh distracted.'

"But his wife was too taken up with the gin bottle to pay much heed to
his pitiful words. She just kept flirting around in the water and
singing snatches of bad sailor songs she'd picked up around the docks.

"'Take her home,' said my wife, 'take her home, you weakling, by
force.'

"'But I can't when she's in this condition. I got a child in my arms.'

"'Give me the baby,' said my wife, with sudden determination. 'I'll
take care of it until to-morrow night when you can come back here and
get it.'

"He handed the flopping little thing up to my wife and turned to the
mermaid.

"'Lil,' he says to her, holding out his arms to her, 'Lil, will you
come home?'

"Lil swims up to him then and takes him by the arm and looks at him
for a long time.

"'Kiss me, Archie,' she says suddenly, 'I don't mind if I do,' and
flipping a couple of pounds of water upon the both of us on the pier,
she pulls him under the water laughing and that's the last I saw of
either of them. Now I ain't asaying as I have ever seen a mermaid mind
you," continued the chief, "but what I do say is that if any man has
ever seen one I'm the man."

"I understand perfectly," said I, "and what, chief, became of the
baby?"

"Oh, the baby," said the chief, thoughtful like; "the baby--well, you
see, about that baby--" he gazed searchingly around the landscape for
a moment before replying.

"Oh, the baby," he said suddenly, as if greatly relieved, "well, my
wife took the baby home and kept it in the bathtub for a couple of
days after which she returned it in person to its father. She made me
give up my job. It did squint, though," said the chief, as he got up
to go, "ever so little."

I turned to my shovel.

"But I ain't saying as I have ever seen a mermaid," he said, turning
back in his tracks, "all I'm saying is that--"

"I know, Chief," I said wearily, "I fully appreciate your delicacy and
fairness. You're not the man to make any false claims."

"No, sir, not I," he replied, as he walked slowly away.


_August 5th._ In order to distract Mr. Fogerty's attention from his
love affair and in a sort of desperate endeavor to win him back to me
I took him away on my last liberty with me. Fogerty doesn't come under
the heading of a lap dog, but through some technical quibble I managed
to smuggle him into the subway. All he did there was to knock over one
elderly lady and lick her face effusively when he had gotten her down.
This resulted in a small but complete panic. For the most part,
however, he sat quietly on my lap and sniffed at those around him. At
last we reached Washington Square, whereupon I proceeded to take Mr.
Fogerty around and show him off to my friends. He was well received,
but his heart wasn't with us. It was far away in City Island.

[Illustration: "FOR THE MOST PART, HOWEVER, HE SAT QUIETLY ON MY LAP
AND SNIFFED"]

At one restaurant we ran into a female whose hair was nearly as short
as Fogerty's. She was holding forth on the Silence of the Soul vs. the
Love Impulse, the cabbage or some other plant. Fogerty listened to her
for a while and then bit her. He did it quietly, but I thought it best
to take him away.

After supper we went up to another place for coffee, a fine little
place for sailormen, situated on the south side of the square. Here
we were received with winning cordiality and Fogerty was given a fried
egg, a dish of which he is passionately fond. But even here he got
into trouble by putting one of his great feet through a Ukulele, which
isn't such a terrible thing to do, except in certain places.

Getting back to the station was a crisp little affair. Fogerty and
myself rose at five and went forth to the shuttle. The subway was a
madhouse. We shuttled ourselves to death. At 5.30 we were at the Times
Square end of the shuttle, at 5.45 we were at Williams, at 6 o'clock
we had somehow managed to get ourselves on the east side end of the
shuttle, five minutes later we were back at Times Square, ten minutes
later we were over on the east side once more. At 6.15 I lost Fogerty.
At 6.25 I was back at Times Square. "Hello, buddy," said the guard,
"you back again? Here's your dog."

At 7 o'clock we were at Van Cortlandt Park, at 8 we were at
Ninety-sixth Street, 9 o'clock found us laboring up to the gate of the
camp, with a written list of excuses that looked like the schedule of
a flourishing railroad. It was accepted, much to our surprise.


_Aug. 7th._ I have a perfectly splendid idea. Of course, like the rest
of my ideas it won't work, but it is a perfectly splendid idea for all
that. I got it while traveling on the ferry boat from New York to
Staten Island--the longest sea voyage I have had since I joined the
Navy. On this trip, strangely thrilling to a sailor in my situation,
but which was suffered with bored indifference by the amphibious
commuters that infest this Island in those waters, I saw a number of
ships so gaudily and at the same time so carelessly painted that any
God-fearing skipper of the Spanish Main would positively have refused
to command. Captain Kidd himself would have blushed at the very sight
of this ribald fleet and turned away with a devout imprecation.

This was my first experience with camouflage, and it impressed me most
unfavorably. An ordinary ship on a grumbling ocean is difficult enough
as it is to establish friendly relations with, but when trigged out in
this manner--why serve meals at all, say I. Nevertheless it occurred
to me that it would not be a bad idea at all to camouflage one's
hammock in such a manner that it took upon itself the texture and
appearance of the bulkhead of the barracks in which it was swung. In
this manner a sailor could sleep undisturbed for three weeks if he so
desired (and he does), without ever being technically considered a
deserter.