haplain was ill, so one of the
young captains read the service. Claude stood by watching until
the sailors shot one sack, longer by half a foot than the other
four, into a lead-coloured chasm in the sea. There was not even a
splash. After breakfast one of the Kansas orderlies called him
into a little cabin where they had prepared the dead men for
burial. The Army regulations minutely defined what was to be done
with a deceased soldier's effects. His uniform, shoes, blankets,
arms, personal baggage, were all disposed of according to
instructions. But in each case there was a residue; the dead
man's toothbrushes, his razors, and the photographs he carried
upon his person. There they were in five pathetic little heaps;
what should be done with them?

Claude took up the photographs that had belonged to his corporal;
one was a fat, foolish-looking girl in a white dress that was too
tight for her, and a floppy hat, a little flag pinned on her
plump bosom. The other was an old woman, seated, her hands
crossed in her lap. Her thin hair was drawn back tight from a
hard, angular face--unmistakably an Old-World face--and her eyes
squinted at the camera. She looked honest and stubborn and
unconvinced, he thought, as if she did not in the least
understand.

"I'll take these," he said. "And the others--just pitch them
over, don't you think?"

VII

B Company's first officer, Captain Maxey, was so seasick
throughout the voyage that he was of no help to his men in the
epidemic. It must have been a frightful blow to his pride, for
nobody was ever more anxious to do an officer's whole duty.

Claude had known Harris Maxey slightly in Lincoln; had met him at
the Erlichs' and afterward kept up a campus acquaintance with
him. He hadn't liked Maxey then, and he didn't like him now, but
he thought him a good officer. Maxey's family were poor folk from
Mississippi, who had settled in Nemaha county, and he was very
ambitious, not only to get on in the world, but, as he said, to
"be somebody." His life at the University was a feverish pursuit
of social advantages and useful acquaintances. His feeling for
the "right people" amounted to veneration. After his graduation,
Maxey served on the Mexican Border. He was a tireless drill
master, and threw himself into his duties with all the energy of
which his frail physique was capable. He was slight and
fair-skinned; a rigid jaw threw his lower teeth out beyond the
upper ones and made his fa