So I returned to the game and followed his instructions. On my next roll, we lost three dollars. Ben won a little against the dice. Then I lost five dollars more on my roll, and Ben won one against. Then Ben got mad and slapped down all we had; thirteen dollars. “Shoot the works!” he declared. And I was promptly covered. That time I rolled a ten, and it required just three rolls to get from that number down to seven. I looked at Ben. He growled and turned away. I followed him up the ladder and out on deck. When I caught up with him, I asked, “Where you going now?” “To borrow ten bucks from a guy I know,” he replied. “You wait here for me.” So I waited and while I hung around the door to the carpentry shop I heard the voice of a chaplain preaching to a crowd on the deck right over our compartment. It struck me as awfully funny: a preacher upstairs giving a sermon and a gang downstairs gambling! Pretty soon Ben came back, with a grin on his ugly face. “Come on!” he called. “We’ll trim dese guys yet.” When I got back in my old place in the circle, I noticed that the voice of that chaplain upstairs was audible even down here, and I mentioned the fact to the man next to me. “That’s Doc Lumber,” he informed me. “He has about as much business in the army as I have in a lady’s seminary.” “What’s the matter with him?” I asked. “Oh—nothing. He’s all right, you know. Good preacher, but old-fashioned and too damned serious and literal-minded for an army chaplain. Nobody pays any attention to his preaching, anyway.” So I turned my attention to the game. Ben had made a bet against the dice and lost a dollar. On the next man’s roll, he won a dollar. The dice came to me. “We shoot one buck,” announced Ben, throwing out the dollar. It was no sooner covered than I rolled out a nine and repeated promptly. “Shoot the two,” said Ben. It was covered and out rolled an eleven. “Four bet,” announced Ben, restraining me from picking up part of the four dollars. “Let’s play safe,” I argued. “You’re hot, Leony—let it ride!” So I did and we proceeded to run wild, until Ben advised that we could now play safe. After a while my mind began to wander around and my ears caught up the sound of the chaplain’s voice again. I looked up and discovered that a ventilator shaft opened almost directly over my head, which explained how the chaplain’s voice came down to us so clearly. Then it struck me as probable that our noise could be heard up on deck. But up to this point the crap shooters had managed to keep their voices more or less subdued. Gambling was prohibited, of course, and most of these games were very quiet affairs. Now, however, the game became rather exciting, due to several wild runs of luck to the profit of a corporal and a sailor. The voices began to sound a little higher and louder, as the men forgot to be careful. I decided that Sergeant Canwick would be better off up on deck listening to the sermon.