just a seaman who knew the sea from
Shanghai to New Orleans; from Liverpool to Barcelona. His knowledge of
knots and sails and rifles and bayonets and fists was a thing to strike
you dumb. He wasn't the stuff of which officers are made. But you should
have seen him with a Springfield! Or a bayonet! A bare twenty-five,
Moran, but with ten years' sea experience. Into those ten years he had
jammed a lifetime of adventure. And he could do expertly all the things
that Tyler Kamps did amateurishly. In a barrack, or in a company street,
the man who talks the loudest is the man who has the most influence. In
Tyler's barrack Gunner Moran was that man.

Because of what he knew they gave him two hundred men at a time and made
him company commander, without insignia or official position. In rank,
he was only a "gob" like the rest of them. In influence a captain. Moran
knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet. It was a matter of
balance, of poise, more than of muscle.

Up in the front of his men, "G'wan," he would yell. "Whatddye think
you're doin'! Tickling 'em with a straw! That's a bayonet you got there,
not a tennis rackit. You couldn't scratch your initials on a Fritz that
way. Put a little guts into it. Now then!"

He had been used to the old Krag, with a cam that jerked out, and threw
back, and fed one shell at a time. The new Springfield, that was a
gloriously functioning thing in its simplicity, he regarded with a sort
of reverence and ecstasy mingled. As his fingers slid lightly,
caressingly along the shining barrel they were like a man's fingers
lingering on the soft curves of a woman's throat. The sight of a rookie
handling this metal sweetheart clumsily filled him with fury.

"Whatcha think you got there, you lubber, you! A section o' lead pipe!
You ought t' be back carryin' a shovel, where you belong. Here. Just a
touch. Like that. See? Easy now."

He could box like a professional. They put him up against Slovatsky, the
giant Russian, one day. Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams,
and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile
bantam that was hopping about at his feet. Suddenly the bantam crouched,
sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap. Something had crashed up against
Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right
for a slashing blow. Moran was directly in the path of it. It seemed
that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape