Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

502 a deserted and furnitureless remnant of what had been a respectable middle class Belgian home, Harmon, Ruffit, Tuesday, and Treman- ner were assigned to the same bare room by a yawning company sergeant-major, awakened from sleep by the arrival of the draft. He motioned with a lantern he was carrying. “Muck in there for the night, you men, and don’t go turnin’ out the blurry guard every time a rat runs across you. ‘This isn’t Blighty you’re in now. No lights and pipe down. The rest of the troops wants sleep.” He was not at all the spick and span ser- geant-major they were accustomed to meet- at Camberham and London. There was mud caked on his boots and his buttons had not seen a button stick for ages. He ~ was lean, brown, and haggard about the eyes, with that set, staring look about the pupils, that men acquire who are often sub- jected to the hysteria of battle—a look that Harmon and the other healthy looking, well fed recruits would acquire themselves in time. But he had the square-shouldered parade look for all that. A whistle blew shrilly in the street below. “There goes the warning,” the sergeant- major jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “ Keep your silly ’eads inside now. You won’t get ’urt. Just an airplane raid.” “What company are we assigned to, sir?’”? Harmon ventured to ask. “ Three Company—mine. An’ look sharp to get on parade on time to-morrow.” He left, swinging his lantern, and cursing the narrowness of the stairs. “ Well,” Tuesday said, rolling up in his blanket, “ they seem milder here than in Camberham. Talks real peaceful after what we’re used to.” “ You're in the line now,” Tremanner’s voice came from acorner. “ All together— captains, colonels, corporals and privates— in a messy, bloody business requiring disci- pline, but comradeship, too. I fancy it will be easier some ways—and harder, too.” “This is my meat,” Tuesday boasted. “‘T’d rather be here any day.” Some one near at hand seemed to drop a large basketful of crockery from the top of ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. a ten-story building with a crash that made every one in the darkened room jump nerv- ously. Another explosion sounded closer, shaking the broken plaster from the ceiling in a snowstorm of lime. A third blast was louder than either of the other two, leav- ing Harmon’s ears singing painfully for a full minute of silence. “What the hell!” Tuesday muttered in a stage whisper, and they all, in spite of the sergeant-major’s orders, crowded to the broken window. Searchlights flickered across the sky, caught for a fleeting instant a silvery speck, not much bigger than a gnat, beneath the clouds. Antiaircraft guns, firing in a five- burst rapid pom-pom-pom-pom-pom, kept up a crackling fire, each tiny shell, on ex- ploding, adding another patch of cottony white to a veritable snowstorm around the silvery gnat. Then everything became quiet again sud- denly and the whistles sounded up and down the street. Passing below them at a stumbling trot, came four laden men, one on each corner of a stretcher. Another man hurried along- side. By the light of the lantern he car- ried, the recruits caught a glimpse of a still form on the stretcher, one arm dangling limply over the side where the hurrying bearers had neglected to replace it, and dropping from the lax fingers a thin trail of red along the cobblestones. “You were saying,’ Tremanner said softly to Tuesday, ‘“‘ you’d rather be here in the line—”’ “ Aw, dry up!” Tuesday blurted. guy can’t even make a remark!” “Sorry,” grinned Tremanner, and they all went quietly—and a little thoughtfully —to bed, on the plaster-covered floor. ccm CHAPTER XVIII. THE LINES OF THE LONDON LIGHT. ANCE-SERGEANT BOWLES, of Third [- Company, “old sweat,” with nine years of service and two solid years of France, leaned his muddy back against the parapet, and blinked sleepily through the periscope at the dawn creeping through Gomichboo (G cS (E@)