troop-ship, drew in again the familiar things; he beheld the red tiles
a-shimmer above the yellow stone; the aromatic scent of budding
eucalyptus was in his nostrils, the sound of the young laughter of women
in his ears. He sat up, gazing uncertainly at the dark, crowded space,
the narrow stairway, the great iron racks covered with gray-blanketed
shapes; then he crawled into his uniform and out on the ship's deck. The
early dawn had set the towers of the city glittering; already the low
wharf-sheds along the water-front were astir with life. Back of the town
the twin peaks, named by the early Franciscans for a woman's breasts,
rose veiled with a filmy scarf of fog. Everywhere below them spangled
flags in myriads flapped from the tops of the city and among the crowded
shipping.

Ashley leaned over the rail of the _Peking_ and watched the yellow tide
slide by with its burden of debris. Not far away in the stream lay the
other two transports, unattended; it was too early for the fussy craft
that curtseyed about them during the day. At three o'clock that
afternoon these vessels were to sail for the distant Philippines,
bearing arms against the ancient country of the Spanish Fathers--the
pioneers who had shown the Saxon the way to this golden coast and had
made vine and rose flourish for him on the barren sandhills, that he
might now strip from the land of their forefathers the last possession
of a dying empire. By the strange turnings of history, from the very
city of their patron saint the New World was sending forth its first
hostile expedition against the Old, and the great community that had
grown from their nestling mission of Dolores would shriek Godspeed to
these enemies of Old Spain.

Nothing of this was in Ashley's mind as he watched the water lapping at
the beach-side of the transports. He kept saying over in his mind the
words of his bunk-mate, "It's Commencement Day! Don't you want your
degree?"

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Tom, looking at his coarse
blue uniform, smiled as he thought on his plans for Graduation Week.
Those feet, now clad in new government gunboats, were to have waltzed
but two nights before in shining patent-leather at the head of the
Senior Ball. Only yesterday he should have been galloping around the
bases in fantastic costume at the Senior-Faculty game. Monday afternoon,
when he should have been before the Chapel site with Her, listening to
the glories of the Class as to