ns of mush, beans, stewed "jerky," and
potatoes boiled in their jackets. The men who had rolled out of their
beds fully dressed, save for shoes, formed in a long line near the
tent door and moved swiftly along the tables, taking up knives,
forks, plates, and cups as they went, helping themselves generously to
each different dish as they came to it. Many stopped at the farther
ends of the boards, standing and eating from them. Many more took
their plates and cups of coffee away from the tables and squatted down
to eat, placing their dishes upon the sand. There was remarkably
little confusion, no time lost, as the two hundred men helped
themselves to their breakfast. They did not appear to have seen
Truxton; they glanced swiftly at Conniston and seemed to forget his
presence in their hunger.

Never had Conniston seen a crowd of men like these. There were
Americans there, and from the broken bits of conversation which
floated to him he knew that they hailed from east, west, north, and
south. There were Hungarians, Slavonians, Swedes--heavy, stolid,
slow-moving men whose knowledge of the English language rose and set
in "damn" and "hell." There were Chinamen and Japs--a dozen of the
slant-eyed, yellow-faced Orientals--the Chinamen all big, gaunt men
with their queues coiled about their heads. There were Italians, the
lower class known to the West as "Dagoes." And almost to the last man
of them they were the hardest-faced men he had ever seen.

There was a big, loose-limbed giant of an Englishman who walked like a
sailor, who carried a great white scar across his cheek and upper lip,
and who wore a long unscabbarded knife swinging from his belt. There
was a wiry little Frenchman who showed a deep scar at the base of his
throat, from which his shirt was rolled back, and who snarled like a
cat when another man accidentally trod upon his foot. Conniston saw a
dozen faces scarred as though by knife-cuts; twisted, evil faces;
dark, scowling faces; faces lined by unbridled passions; brutal,
heavy-jawed faces.

But if their faces showed the handiwork of the devil, from their chins
down they were men cast in the mold of the image of God. From the
biggest Dane standing close to six feet six inches to the smallest Jap
less than five feet tall, they were men of iron and steel. Quick-eyed,
quick-footed, hard, they were the sort of men to drive the fight
against the desert.

Breakfast finished, the men dropped their cups and plates