As other soldiers gathered around, Tim stood up and left the group. He walked back to the tent. A warm breeze blew in from the ocean. He reached for his poncho and spread it on the ground not far from the tent. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head. Red’s voice came clear in the silence of the starlit night. Tim thought of Kate. The last time he’d written her he’d known in his heart he was writing the thoughts of a boy who had left home two long years before. If only he and Kate could meet and talk for a while. He remembered the first time he’d danced with her, the light from the chandeliers striking the whirling figures in the white-painted room of the new Town Hall. As he drifted into sleep Tim thought about the dresses, pink and salmon and powder blue against the men’s black suits. * * * * * When reveille sounded Tim woke up and rolled over. Red lay on the sand a few feet away, groaning as he opened his eyes in the predawn light. “Last night when I curled up here,” he said in a rasping whisper, “I thought you had a good idea, sleeping on the ground.” Tim felt his poncho and his clothes. They were soaked with dew. Captain Kautz was already up, sitting on a keg outside the tent, straining his eyes to take in every detail of the waking camp, already thinking about the day that lay ahead. “We break camp now. The transport moves with the morning tide.” He stood up. “I suppose we have to set off a charge of powder by Dawson’s head to get him up.” Dawson came out of the tent and stared, silent and hostile, at Kautz’s back. “Very funny, Captain,” he said, putting his hand to his head. The four men ate their rations of salt pork and hardtack and bitter coffee. The companies formed in columns to march to the pier and board a ferry that would take them across to Hilton Head. As they crossed Port Royal Sound the sky in the east was touched by the light of dawn. A mist hung over the sea. The ferry coasted into the landing and the soldiers were silent, watching the shore or staring moodily at the deck, showing none of the spirit of the night before. The troops waited by the big, gray sheds, built when the islands had first been occupied. The men talked quietly and some of them realizing that there would be a wait, took off their cartridge boxes and canteens and stacked their rifles. The pier crossed a narrow strip of beach and jutted more than a hundred yards into the water. A narrow-gauge railroad track ran out to the end of the pier where a T-shaped float broadened the docking space. Two large transports waited at the end of the pier, smoke trailing away from their single funnels. Just ahead of them a smaller vessel was being unloaded by half-a-dozen stevedores. Beyond the pier were the masts and funnels of a score of other ships, the farthest ones dim in the morning mist.