“‘This old tub’s kind of tired—been over-worked all day. Don’t try to pack them in too tight.’
“But the captain wouldn’t listen. He sent them over like sardines and each time Abe stood on the rail and shouted:
“‘Unbuckle your belts and sling your packs light on your shoulders—’ (this without looking at the captain because he’d realized that the captain didn’t like orders except his own). But the em-barking officer spoke up once more:
“‘That raft’s low in the water,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it. When you started shooting off that cannon the horses began jumping and the men ran around and unbalanced it.’
“‘Tell the captain,’ Abe said. ‘He knows everything.’
“The captain overheard this. ‘There’s just one more load,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want any more discussion about it.’
“It was a big load, even according to Captain Brown’s ideas. Abe got up on the side to make his announcement.
“‘They ought to know that by this time,’ Captain Brown snapped out. ‘They’ve heard it often enough.’
“‘Not this bunch.’ Abe rattled it off anyhow and the men unloosened their belts, except a few at the far end who weren’t paying attention. Or maybe it was so jammed they couldn’t hear.
“We began to sink when we were half way over, very slowly at first, just a little water around the shoes, but we officers didn’t say anything for fear of a panic. It had looked like a small river from the bank but here in the middle and at the rate we were going, it began to look like the widest river in the world.
“In two minutes the water was a yard high in the old soup plate and there wasn’t any use concealing things any longer. For once the captain was tongue-tied. Abe got up on the side again and said to stay calm, and not rock the boat and we’d get there, and made his speech one last time about slipping off the packs, and told the ones that could swim to jump off when it got to their hips. The men took it well but you could almost tell from their faces which ones could swim and which couldn’t.
“She went down with a big whush! just twenty yards from shore; her nose grounded in a mud bank five feet under water.
“I don’t remember much about the next fifteen minutes. I dove and swam out into the river a few yards for a view but it all looked like a mass of khaki and water with some sound over it that I remember as a sustained monotone but was composed, I suppose, of cussing, and a few yells of fright, and even a little kidding and laughter. I swam in and helped pull people to shore, but it was a slow business in our shoes …
“When there was nothing more in sight in the river (except one corner of the barge which had perversely decided to bob up) Captain Brown and Abe met. The captain was weak and shaking and his arrogance was gone.
“‘Oh God,’ he said. ’What’ll I do?’
“Abe took control of things—he fell the men in and got squad reports to see if anyone was missing.
“There were three missing in the first squad alone and we didn’t wait for the rest—we called for twenty good swimmers to strip and start diving and as fast as they pulled in a body we started a medico working on it. We pulled out twenty-eight bodies and revived seven. And one of the divers didn’t come up—he was found floating down the river next day and they gave a medal and a pension to his widow.”
Hibbing paused and then added: “But I know that’s small potatoes to you fellows in the big time.”
“Sounds exciting enough to me,” said Joe Boone. “I had a good time in France but I spent most of it guarding prisoners at Brest.”
“But how about finishing this?” I demanded. “Why did this drive Abe hell-raising?”
“That was the captain,” said Hibbing slowly. “A couple of officers tried to get Abe a citation or something for the trench mortar thing. The captain didn’t like that, and he began going around saying that when Abe jumped up on the side of the barge to give the unsling order, he’d hung on to the ferry cable and pulled it out of whack. The captain found a couple of people who agreed with him but there were others who thought it was overloading and the commotion the horses made at the shell bursts. But Abe was never very happy in the army after that.”
There was an emphatic interruption in the person of Pete himself who said in no uncertain words:
“Mr. Tomlinson and Mr. Boone. Your wives say they calling for the last time. They say this has been one night too often, and if you I don’t get back to the Inn in ten minutes they driving to Philadelphia.”
Tommy and Joe Boone arose reluctantly.
“I’m afraid I’ve monopolized the evening,” said Hibbing. “And after what you fellows must have seen.”
When they had gone I lingered for a minute.
“So Abe wasn’t killed in France.”
“No—you’ll notice all that tablet says is ‘died in service.’”
“What did he die of?”
Hibbing hesitated.
“He was shot by a guard trying to escape from Leavenworth. They’d given him ten years.”
“God! And what a great guy he was in college.”
“I suppose he was to his friends. But he was a good deal of a snob wasn’t he?”
“Maybe to some people.”
“He didn’t seem to even recognize a lot of his classmates when he met them in the army.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. I told you something that wasn’t true tonight. That captain’s name wasn’t Brown.”
Again I asked him what he meant.
“The captain’s name was Hibbing,” he said. “I was that captain, and when I rode up to join my company he acted as if he’d never seen me before. It kind of threw me off—because I used to love this place. Well—good night.”
