I observed in shamed silence.  My hands ached.  A motor boat slid swiftly by and I distinctly saw a man drinking beer from the bottle.  “Hell isn’t dark and smoky,” thought I to myself; “hell is bright and sunny, and there is lots of sparkling water in it and on the sparkling water are innumerable boats and in these boats are huddled the poor lost mortals who are forced to listen through eternity to the wise cracks of cloven-hoofed, spike-tailed coxswains.  That’s what hell is,” thought I, “and I am in my probation period right now.”

“Feather your oars!” suddenly screamed our master at the straining crew.

“Feather me eye!” yelled back a courageous Irishman.  “What do you think these oars are, anyway—­a flock of humming birds?  Whoever heard of feathering a hundred-ton weight?  Feather Pike’s Peak, say I; it’s just as easy.”

Somehow we got back to the pier, but I was almost delirious by this time.  The last part of the trip was all one drab, dull nightmare to me.  This evening my hands were so swollen I was forced to the extremity of bribing a friend to hold the telephone receiver for me when I called up mother.

“What have you been doing?” she asked.

“Rowing,” came my short answer.

“What a splendid outing!” she exclaimed.  “You had such a lovely day for it, didn’t you, dear?”

“Hang up that receiver!” I shouted to my friend; “hang it up, or my mother shall hear from the lips of her son words she should only hear from her husband.”

May 9th. I am just after having been killed in a sham battle, and so consequently I feel rather ghastly to-day.  I don’t exactly know whether I was a Red or a Blue, because I did a deal of fighting on both sides, but always with the same result.  I was killed instantly and completely.  People got sick of putting me out of my misery after a while and I was allowed to wander around at large in a state of great mystification and excitement, shooting my blank bullets into the face of nature in an aimless sort of manner whenever the battle began to pall upon me.

Most of the time I passed pleasantly on the soft, fresh flank of a hill where for a while I slept until a cow breathed heavily in my face and reminded me that it was war after all.  My instructions were to keep away from the guns, and get killed as soon as possible.  As these instructions were not difficult to follow, I carried them out to the letter.  I stayed away from the guns and I permitted myself to be killed several times in order to make sure it would take.  After that I became a sort of composite camp follower, deserter and straggler.

In my wandering I chanced upon an ancient enemy of many past encounters.

“Are you Red or Blue?” I asked, preparing to die for the fifth time.

“No,” he answered, sarcastically, “I’m what you might call elephant ear gray.”

“Are you the guy the reporter for the camp paper was referring to in his last story?” I asked him.