Fuselli lay flat on deck resting his head on his crossed arms. When he looked straight up he could see a lead-colored mast sweep back and forth across the sky full of clouds of light grey and silver and dark purplish-grey showing yellowish at the edges. When he tilted his head a little to one side he could see Bill Grey's heavy colorless face and the dark bristles of his unshaven chin and his mouth a little twisted to the left, from which a cigarette dangled unlighted. Beyond were heads and bodies huddled together in a mass of khaki overcoats and life preservers. And when the roll tipped the deck he had a view of moving green waves and of a steamer striped grey and white, and the horizon, a dark taut line, broken here and there by the tops of waves. “O God, I feel sick,” said Bill Grey, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and looking at it revengefully. “I'd be all right if everything didn't stink so. An' that mess hall. Nearly makes a guy puke to think of it.” Fuselli spoke in a whining voice, watching the top of the mast move like a pencil scrawling on paper, back and forth across the mottled clouds. “You belly-achin' again?” A brown moon-shaped face with thick black eyebrows and hair curling crisply about a forehead with many horizontal wrinkles rose from the deck on the other side of Fuselli. “Get the hell out of here.” “Feel sick, sonny?” came the deep voice again, and the dark eyebrows contracted in an expression of sympathy. “Funny, I'd have my sixshooter out if I was home and you told me to get the hell out, sonny.” “Well, who wouldn't be sore when they have to go on K.P.?” said Fuselli peevishly. “I ain't been down to mess in three days. A feller who lives on the plains like I do ought to take to the sea like a duck, but it don't seem to suit me.” “God, they're a sick lookin' bunch I have to sling the hash to,” said Fuselli more cheerfully. “I don't know how they get that way. The fellers in our company ain't that way. They look like they was askeered somebody was going to hit 'em. Ever noticed that, Meadville?” “Well, what d'ye expect of you guys who live in the city all your lives and don't know the butt from the barrel of a gun an' never straddled anything more like a horse than a broomstick. Ye're juss made to be sheep. No wonder they have to herd you round like calves.” Meadville got to his feet and went unsteadily to the rail, keeping, as he threaded his way through the groups that covered the transport's after deck, a little of his cowboy's bow-legged stride. “I know what it is that makes men's eyes blink when they go down to that putrid mess,” came a nasal voice. Fuselli turned round. Eisenstein was sitting in the place Meadville had just left. “You do, do you?” “It's part of the system. You've got to turn men into beasts before ye can get 'em to act that way. Ever read Tolstoi?”