The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.

“That crazy man gives me the creeps,” he groaned.  “He’s always waking me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me.”

“Shut your head,” said the steward.  “He’s a better crazy man than you’ll ever be with the little sense you’ve got.  And he has two Mauser holes in him.  Crazy, eh?  It’s a damned good thing for you that there was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you’d never seen the top of the hill.”

One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their pajamas, and pointed one way.  The transport was moving swiftly and smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise with her steam-whistle.  The noise was echoed by many more steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared, saluting joyously.  All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered.  The fog lifted suddenly, and between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either side of a great harbor.  Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with curling smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.

The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief.  He was far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it.  In his heart he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines.  He had been deceived too often not to know that it was not real.  He knew from cruel experience that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble away, the thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow in the sun, the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue would vanish into the sea, leaving it gray and bare.  He closed his eyes and shut the vision out.  It was so beautiful that it tempted him; but he would not be mocked, and he buried his face in his hands.  They were carrying the farce too far, he thought.  It was really too absurd; for now they were at a wharf which was so real that, had he not known by previous suffering, he would have been utterly deceived by it.  And there were great crowds of smiling, cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor in fresh uniforms, and rows of police pushing the people this way and that; and these men about him were taking it all quite seriously, and making ready to disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles with them.