A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen CrusadeKing, Charles
General
A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen Crusade
King, Charles
United States. Army -- Military life -- Fiction
Ray was not in his stateroom when Foster bustled thither to inquire. Ray
had returned some hours before, said the ship's official on duty. Ray
was not found, however, until nearly four bells, when Foster, who had
smoked too much to feel sleepy and wished to "stay up and see Vesuvius,
anyhow," made an extended inspection of the silent deck. Foster had
taken it amiss that Ray should seem so downhearted and be so
uncompanionable. Foster felt that the time had come when, in the absence
of Sandy's own, he (Foster) should assume paternal rights, or at least
those of elder brother, and take the youngster to task. Here and there
about the big ship he found, in knots of two or three, silent or
conversing in low tone, comrades of the commissioned list or of the
ranks, unwilling to seek their berths so long as so gorgeous a panorama
lasted. These were ranged along the starboard side, where best they
could study that superb sweep of shore line, of light and shadow, of
slope and mountain, of curving strand--white, flashing in the moonbeams,
of twinkling villages low-lying, of distant, rock-ribbed isles, but
among these worshipers there was no Ray.
It was over on the other--the dark, the port--side, and all alone,
sprawled in a steamer chair he had lugged to the upper deck and the
shadow of the big boat, that Foster came upon the lad. His field glasses
were in his hand; his eyes fixed dreamily upon the dwindling,
diminishing night lights of the westward suburbs, and Foster hailed
brusquely. It was time to jar the boy out of his mooning:
"Hello, Sandy! Where on earth have you been all night?"
"Nowhere," was the short reply.
"Where on sea then, if you will be captious?"
"Oh, admiring scenery," and Sandy yawned suggestively.
"Scenery is all on t'other side, man! Nothing here but ships and shore
lights."
"Well--that's what I'm--looking at."
Foster turned sulkily. He disliked being "stood off" by anybody,
especially a youngster. Dimly in the soft moonlight the sleeping city
lay outspread before him. Standing on the rail, grasping a stanchion, he
could see, save where the charthouse and huge funnel interposed, the
entire sweep from Posilipo at the west around almost to Sorrento. Ray,
seated under the shadow of the long boat, could see only from Posilipo
to a low-lying cluster of lights almost at the water's edge. That then
was the Piazza Umberto, and those few twinkling, starlike sparkles to
the left, dancing so merrily on the intervening wave--those were from
some still open casements at the Grand. Then Foster saw what Sandy Ray
was looking for, and turned and left him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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