The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land by Ralph Connor (page 3)

with a full appreciation of its solemn reality, but without fear, and with a quiet determination to make whatever sacrifice might be demanded of them. The perfect understanding that had always marked their intercourse with each other was restored. The intolerable burden of mutual uncertainty in regard to each other’s attitude toward the war was lifted. All shadows that lay between them were gone. Nothing else really mattered.

The day following, Barry received a rude shock. The M. O., after an examination, to his amazement and dismay, pronounced him physically unfit for service.

“And why, pray?” cried his father indignantly, when Barry announced the astounding report. “Is the man a fool? I understood that he was strict. But you! unfit! It is preposterous. Unfit! how?”

“Heart murmur,” said Barry. “Sets it down to asthma. You remember I told you I had a rotten attack after my experience last week in the river. He suggested that I apply for a position in an ambulance corps, and he is giving me a letter to Colonel Sidleigh at Edmonton. I am going to-morrow to Edmonton to see Sidleigh, and besides I have some church business to attend to. I must call upon my superintendent. You remember I made an application to him for another mission field.”

He found Colonel Sidleigh courteously willing to accept his application, the answer to which, he was informed, he might expect in a fortnight; and so went with a comparatively light heart to his interview with his superintendent.

The interview, however, turned out not entirely as he had expected. He went with an idea of surrendering his appointment. His superintendent made him an offer of another and greater.

“So they turned you down,” said the superintendent. “Well, I consider it most providential. You have applied for a position on the ambulance corps. As fine as is that service, and as splendid as are its possibilities, I offer you something much finer, and I will even say much more important to our army and to our cause. We are in need of men for the Chaplain Service, and for this service we demand the picked men of our church. The appointments that have been made already are some of them most unsuitable, some, I regret to say, scandalous. Let me tell you, sir, of an experience in Winnipeg only last week. It was, my fortune to fall in with the commanding officer of a Saskatchewan unit. I found him in a rage against the church and all its officials. His chaplain had become so hilarious at the mess that he was quite unable to carry on.”

“Hilarious?” inquired Barry.

“Hilarious, sir. Yes, plain drunk. Think of it. Think of the crime! the shame of it! A man charged with the responsibility of the souls of these men going to war–possibly to their death– drunk, in their presence! A man standing for God and the great eternal verities, incapacitated before them! I took the matter up with Ottawa, and I have this satisfaction at least, that I believe that no such appointment will ever be made again. That chaplain, I may say too, has been dismissed. I have here, sir, a mission field suitable to your ability and experience. I shall not offer it to you. I am offering you the position of chaplain in one of our Alberta battalions.”

Barry stood before him, dumb with dismay.

“Of course, I want to go to the war,” he said at length, “but I am sure, sir, I am not the man for the position you offer me.”

“Sir,” said the superintendent, “I have taken the liberty of sending in your name. Time was an element. Appointments were being rapidly made, and I was extremely anxious that you should go with this battalion. I confess to a selfish interest. My own boy, Duncan, has enlisted in that unit, and many of our finest young men with him. I assumed the responsibility of asking for your appointment. I must urge you solemnly to consider the matter before you decline.”

Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a preacher in his last field.

“I am not a preacher,” he protested. “I am not a ‘mixer.’ They all say so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain.”

“Young man,” said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice, “you know not what transformations in character this war will work. Would I were twenty years younger,” he added passionately, “twenty years sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort, when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need peace.”

Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his superintendent recalled him.

“I have a bit of work to do,” he said, “in which I need your help. I wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in this district. We start this evening.”

There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent’s orders. The two weeks’ experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new estimate of the chaplain’s work. As he came into closer touch with camp life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier’s need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment, by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training, from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain’s privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his own unfitness for the work.

When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.

But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry’s life. He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q., he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser in the office.

“Gone out for the afternoon, sir,” was the word from the orderly in charge.

Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a squad of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill. As he drew near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the N. C. O. in charge.

“That chap knows his job,” he said to himself, “and looks like his job, too,” he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright, soldier-like figure.

Captain Neil he found observing the drill from a distance.

“What do you think of that?” he called out to Barry, as the latter came within hailing distance. “What do you think of my sergeant?”

“Fine,” replied Barry. “Where did you get him?”

“What? Look at him!”

“I am. Pretty natty sergeant he makes, too.”

“Let’s go out there, and I’ll introduce him.”

As they crossed the parade ground, the sergeant dropped his military tone and proceeded to explain in his ordinary voice some details in connection with the drill. Barry, catching the sound of his voice, stopped short.

“You don’t mean it, Captain Neil! Not dad, is it?”

“Nobody else,” said Captain Neil. “Wait a minute. Wait and let’s watch him at his work.”

For some time they stood observing the work of the new sergeant. Barry was filled with amazement and delight.

“What do you think of him?” inquired Captain Neil.

But Barry made no reply.

“My company sergeant major got drunk,” continued Captain Neil. “I had no one to take the drill. I asked your father to take it. He nearly swept us off our feet. In consequence, there he stands, my company sergeant major, and let me tell you, he will be the regimental sergeant major before many weeks have passed, or I’m a German.”

“But his age,” inquired Barry, still in a maze of astonishment.

“Oh, that’s all right. You don’t want them too young. I assured the authorities that he was of proper military age, telling them, at the same time, that I must have him. He’s a wonder, and the men just adore him.”

“I don’t wonder at that,” said Barry.

Together they moved over to the squad. The sergeant, observing his officer, called his men smartly to attention, and greeted the captain with a very snappy salute.

“Sergeant major, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Barry Dunbar,” said Captain Neil with a grin.

“I say, dad,” said Barry, still unable to associate his father with this N. C. O. in uniform who stood before him. “I say, dad, where did you get all that military stuff?”

“I’m very rusty, my boy, very rusty! I hope to brush up, though. The men are improving, I think, sir.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Captain Neil. “How is that wild man from Athabasca doing?”

“He is finding it hard work, sir, I’m afraid. He finds it difficult to connect up this drill business with the business of war. He wants to go right off and kill Germans. But he is making an effort to put up with me.”

“And you, with him, eh, sergeant major? But turn them loose. They have done enough for to-day, and I know your son wants to take you off with him, and get you to explain how you go into the army.”

The explanation came as they were walking home together.

“You see, boy, I felt keenly your disappointment in being rejected from the fighting forces of the country. I felt too that our family ought to be represented in the fighting line, so when Captain Fraser found himself in need of a drill sergeant, I could hardly refuse. I would have liked to have consulted you, my boy, but–“

“Not at all, dad; you did perfectly right. It was just fine of you. I’m as proud as Punch. I only wish I could go with you. I’d like to be in your squad. But never mind, I’ve two jobs open to me now, and I sorely need your advice.”

Together they talked over the superintendent’s offer of the position of chaplain.

“I can’t see myself a chaplain, dad. The position calls for an older man, a man of wider experience. Many of these men would be almost twice my age. Now the superintendent himself would be the man for the job. You ought to see him at his work with the soldiers. I really can’t think I’m fit.”

In this opinion his father rather concurred.

“An older man would be better, Barry–a man of more experience would be of more service, and, yet I don’t know. One thing I am sure of, if you accept the position, I believe you will fill it worthily. After all, in every department, this war is a young man’s job.”

“Of course,” said Barry. “If I went as chaplain, it would be in your unit, dad, and that would be altogether glorious.”

“I do hope so. But we must not allow that, however, to influence our decision,” replied his father.

“I know, I know!” hurriedly agreed Barry. “I trust I would not be unduly influenced by personal considerations.”

This hope, however, was rudely dashed by an unexpected call for a draft of recruits from Captain Neil’s company that came through from Colonel Kavanagh to replace a draft suddenly dispatched to make up to strength another western regiment. Attached to the call there was a specific request, which amounted to a demand for the sergeant major, for whose special qualifications as physical and military instructor there was apparently serious need in Colonel Kavanagh’s regiment.

With great reluctance, and with the expenditure of considerable profanity, Captain Neil Fraser dispatched his draft and agreed to the surrender of his sergeant major.

The change came as a shock to both Barry and his father. For some days they had indulged the hope that they would both be attached to the same military unit, and unconsciously this had been weighing with Barry in his consideration of his probable appointment as chaplain.

The disappointment of their hope was the more bitter when it was announced that Colonel Kavanagh’s battalion was warned for immediate service overseas, and the further announcement that in all probability the new battalion, to which the Wapiti company would be attached, might not be dispatched until some time in the spring.

“But you may catch us up in England, Barry,” said his father, when Barry was deploring their ill luck. “No one knows what our movements will be. I do wish, however, that your position were definitely settled.”

The decision in this matter came quickly, and was, without his will or desire, materially hastened by Barry himself.

Colonel Kavanagh’s battalion being under orders to depart within ten days, a final Church Parade was ordered, at which only soldiers and their kin were permitted to be present. The preacher for the day falling ill from an overweight of war work, and Barry being in the city with nothing to do, the duty of preaching at this Parade Service was suddenly thrust upon him.

To his own amazement and to that of his father, Barry accepted without any fear or hesitation this duty which in other circumstances would have overwhelmed him with dismay. But to Barry the occasion was of such surpassing magnitude and importance that all personal considerations were obliterated.

The war, with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice, its vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his mind. It was this that delivered him from that nervous self- consciousness, the preacher’s curse, that paralyses the mental activities, chills the passions, and cloggs the imagination, so that his sermon becomes a lifeless repetition of words, previously prepared, correct, even beautiful, it may be in form, logical in argument, sound in philosophy, but dead, dull and impotent, bereft of the fire that kindles the powers of the soul, the emotion that urges to action, the imagination that lures to high endeavour.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

The voice, clear, vibrant, melodious, arrested with its first word the eyes and hearts of his hearers, and so held them to the end. With the earnest voice there was the fascination of a face alight with a noble beauty, eyes glowing as with lambent flame.

A second time he read the appealing words, then paused and allowed his eyes to wander quietly over the congregation. They represented to him in that hour the manhood and womanhood of his country. Sincerely, with no attempt at rhetoric and with no employment of any of its tricks, he began his sermon.

“This war,” he said, “is a conflict of ideals eternally opposed. Our ambitious and ruthless enemy has made the issue and has determined the method of settlement. It is a war of souls, but the method of settlement is not that of reason but that of force–a force that finds expression through your bodies. Therefore the appeal of the Apostle Paul, this old-world hero, to the men of his time reaches down to us in this day, and at this crisis of the world’s history. Offer your bodies–these living bodies–these sacred bodies–offer them in sacrifice to God.”

There was little discussion of the causes of the war. What need? They knew that this war was neither of their desiring nor of their making. There was no attempt to incite hatred or revenge. There was little reference to the horrors of war, to its griefs, its dreadful agonies, its irreparable losses.

From the first word he lifted his audience to the high plane of sacrament and sacrifice. They were called upon to offer upon the altar of the world’s freedom all that they held dear in life–yea, life itself! It was the ancient sacrifice that the noblest of the race had always been called upon to make. In giving themselves to this cause they were giving themselves to their country. They were offering themselves to God. In simple diction, and in clear flowing speech, the sermon proceeded without pause or stumbling to the end. The preacher closed with an appeal to the soldiers present to make this sacrifice of theirs at once worthy and complete. These bodies of theirs were sacred and were devoted to this cause. It was their duty to keep them clean and fit.

For a few brief moments, he turned to the others present at the service–the fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts of the soldiers, and reminded them in tones thrilling with tenderness and sympathy that though not privileged to share in the soldiers’ service in the front lines, none the less might they share in this sacrifice, by patient endurance of the separation and loss, by a cheerful submission to trial, and by continual remembrance in prayer to Almighty God of the sacred cause and its defenders they might help to bring this cause to victory.

In the brief prayer that followed the sermon, in words tender, simple, heart-moving, he led the people in solemn dedication of themselves, soul and body, to their country, to their cause, to their God.

The effect of the sermon and prayer was overpowering. There were no tears, but men walked out with heads more erect, because of the exaltation of spirit which was theirs. And women, fearful of the coming hour of parting, felt their hearts grow strong within them with the thought that they were voluntarily sending their men away. Upon the whole congregation lay a new and solemn sense of duty, a new and uplifting sense of privilege in making the sacrifice of all that they counted precious for this holy cause.

It was the sermon that brought the decision in the matter of Barry’s appointment.

“What do you think of that, Colonel Kavanagh?” asked Captain Neil Fraser, who came in for the service.

“A very fine sermon! A very notable sermon!” said the colonel. “Who is he?”

“He is my own minister,” said Captain Neil, “and he gave me, to- day, the surprise of my life. I didn’t know it was in him. I understand there is a chance of his being our chaplain. He is Sergeant Dunbar’s son.”

“I wish to Heaven we could take him with us! What about it, Fraser? We’ve got the father, why not the son, too? They’d both like it.”

“I say, Colonel, for Heaven’s sake, have a heart. I hated to surrender my company sergeant major. I don’t think I ought to be asked to surrender our chaplain.”

“All right, Fraser, so be it. But you have got a wonderful chaplain in that boy. What a face! What a voice! And that’s the kind of a spirit we want in our men.”

That very afternoon, Captain Neil went straight away to Colonel Leighton, the officer commanding the new regiment to which Captain Neil’s company belonged. To the colonel he gave an enthusiastic report of the sermon, with Colonel Kavanagh’s judgment thereon.

“I would suggest, sir, that you wire Ottawa on the matter,” he urged. “If Colonel Kavanagh thought he had a chance, he would not hesitate. We really ought to get this fixed. I assure you he’s a find.”

“Go to it, then, Fraser. I’m rather interested to see your earnest desire for a chaplain. The Lord knows you need one! Go up to Headquarters and use my name. Say what you like.”

Thus it came that the following day Barry was informed by wire of his appointment as chaplain of the new regiment of Alberta rangers.

“It’s at least a relief to have the matter settled,” said his father, to whom Barry brought his wire. “Barry, I’m glad of the opportunity to tell you that since yesterday, my mind has undergone considerable change. I am not sure but that you have found your place and your work in the war.”

“No, dad,” answered Barry, “I wasn’t responsible for that sermon yesterday. The war was very near and very real to me. Those boys were looking up at me, and you were there, dad. You drew that sermon stuff out of me.”

“If once, why not again? At any rate, it greatly rejoiced me to know that it was there in you. I don’t say I was proud of you, my boy. I was proud of you, but that is not the word that I should like to use. I was profoundly grateful that I was privileged to hear a sermon like that from a son of mine. Now, Barry,” continued his father, “this is our last day together for some months, perhaps forever,” he added in a low tone.

“Don’t, daddy, don’t,” cried Barry, “I can’t bear to think of that to-day.”

“All right, Barry, but why not? It is really far better that we should face all the possibilities. But now that we have this day– and what a perfect day it is–for our last day together, what shall we do with it?”

“I know, dad–I think you would wish that we take our ride into the foothills to-day.”

“It was in my mind, my boy. I hesitated to suggest it. So let us go.”

It was one of those rare November days that only Alberta knows, mellow with the warm sun, and yet with a nip in it that suggested the coming frost, without a ripple of the wind that almost constantly sweeps the Alberta ranges. In the blue sky hung motionless, like white ships at sea, bits of cloud. The long grass, brown, yellow and green in a hundred shades, lay like a carpet over the rolling hills and wide spreading valleys, reaching up on every side to the horizon, except toward the west, where it faded into the blue of the foothills at the bases of the mighty Rockies.

Up the long trail, resilient to their horses’ feet, they cantered where the going was good, or picked their way with slow and careful tread where the rocky ridges jutted through the black soil.

They made no effort to repulse the thought that this was their last day together, nor did they seek to banish the fact of the war. With calm courage and hope they faced the facts of their environment, seeking to aid each other in readjusting their lives to those facts. They were resolutely cheerful. The day was not to be spoiled with tears and lamentations. Already each in his own place and time had made his sacrifice of a comradeship that was far dearer than life. The agony of that hour, each had borne in silence and alone. No shadow should fall across this sunny day.

By the side of the grave, in its little palisaded enclosure, they lingered, the father recalling the days of his earlier manhood, which had been brightened by a love whose fragrance he had cherished and shared with his son through their years together, Barry listening with reverent attention and tender sympathy.

“I had always planned that I too should be laid here, Barry,” said his father, as they prepared to take their departure, “but do you know, boy, this war has made many changes in me and this is one. It seems to me a very little thing where my body lies, if it be offered, as you were saying so beautifully yesterday, in sacrifice to our cause.”

Barry could only nod his head in reply. He was deeply moved.

“You are young, Barry,” said his father, noting his emotion, “and life is very dear to you, my boy.”

“No, dad, no! Not life,” said Barry brokenly. “Not life, only you, dad. I just want you, and, oh dad!” continued the boy, losing hold of himself and making no effort to check or hide the tears that ran down his face, “if one of us is to go in this war,–as is likely enough,–I only want that the other should be there at the time. It would be–terribly–lonely–dad–to go out myself– without you. Or to have you go out–alone.–We have always been together–and you have been–so very good to me, dad. I can’t help this, dad,–I try–but I am not strong enough–I’m not holding back from the sacrifice, dad,” hurrying his words,–“No, no, not that, but perhaps you understand.”

For answer, his father put both his arms around his son, drew his head down to his breast, as if he had been a child.

“There, there, laddie,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “I know, I know! Oh God, how I know. We have lived together very closely, without a shadow ever between us, and my prayer, since this war began, has been that in death, if it had to be, we might be together, and, Barry, somehow I believe God will give us that.”

“Good old dad, good old boy! What a brick you are! I couldn’t help that, dad. Forgive me for being a baby, and spoiling the day–“

“Forgive you, boy,” still with his arms around his son, “Barry, I love you for it. You’ve never brought me one sorrow nor will you. To-day and every day I thank God for you, my son.”

They rode back through the evening toward the camp. By the time they arrived there, the sun had sunk behind the mountains, and the quiet stars were riding serenely above the broken, floating clouds, and in their hearts was peace.

CHAPTER VIII

A QUESTION OF NERVE

“Gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Dunbar, your sky-pilot, padre, chaplain, anything you like? They say he’s a devil of a good preacher. The Lord knows you need one.”

So Barry’s commanding officer introduced him to the mess.

He bowed in different directions to the group of officers who, in the ante-room of the mess, were having a pre-prandial cocktail. Barry found a place near the foot of the table and for a few minutes sat silent, getting his bearings.

Some of the officers were known to him. He had met the commanding officer, Colonel Leighton, a typical, burly Englishman, the owner of an Alberta horse ranch, who, well to do to begin with, had made money during his five years in the country. He had the reputation of being a sporting man, of easy morality, fond of his glass and of good living. He owed his present position, partly to political influence, and partly to his previous military experience in the South African war. His popularity with his officers was due largely to his easy discipline, and to the absence of that rigidity of manner which is supposed to go with high military command, and which civilians are wont to find so irksome.

Barry had also met Major Bustead, the Senior Major of the Battalion, and President of the mess, an eastern Canadian, with no military experience whatever, but with abounding energy and ambition; the close friend and boon companion of Colonel Leighton, he naturally had become his second in command. Barry was especially delighted to observe Major Bayne, whom he had not seen since his first meeting with him some months ago on the Red Pine Trail. Captain Neil Fraser and Lieutenant Stewart Duff were the only officers about the table whom he recognised, except that, among the junior lieutenants, he caught the face of young Duncan Cameron, the oldest son of his superintendent, and a fine, clean-looking young fellow he appeared.

Altogether Barry was strongly attracted by the clean, strong faces about him. He would surely soon find good friends among them, and he only hoped he might be able to be of some service to them.

The young fellow on his right introduced himself as Captain Hopeton. He was a young English public school boy, who, though a failure as a rancher, had proved an immense success in the social circles of the city. Because of this, and also of his family connections “at home,” he had been appointed to a Civil Service position. A rather bored manner and a supercilious air spoiled what would otherwise have been a handsome and attractive face.

After a single remark about the “beastly bore” of military duty, Hopeton ignored Barry, giving such attention as he had to spare from his dinner to a man across the table, with whom, apparently, he had shared some rather exciting social experiences in the city.

For the first half hour of the meal, the conversation was of the most trivial nature, and was to Barry supremely uninteresting. “Shop talk” was strictly taboo, and also all reference to the war. The thin stream of conversation that trickled from lip to lip ran the gamut of sport, spiced somewhat highly with society scandal which, even in that little city, appeared to flourish.

To Barry it was as if he were in a strange land and among people of a strange tongue. Of sport, as understood by these young chaps, he knew little, and of scandal he was entirely innocent; so much so that many of the references that excited the most merriment were to him utterly obscure. After some attempts to introduce topics of conversation which he thought might be of mutual interest, but which had fallen quite flat, Barry gave up, and sat silent with a desolating sense of loneliness growing upon his spirit.

“After the port,” when smoking was permitted, he was offered a cigarette by Hopeton, and surprised that young man mightily by saying that he never smoked. This surprise, it is to be feared, deepened into disgust when, a few moments later, he declined a drink from Hopeton’s whisky bottle, which a servant brought him.

Liquors were not provided at the mess, but officers were permitted to order what they desired.

As the bottles circulated, tongues were loosened. There was nothing foul in the talk, but more and more profanity, with frequent apology to the chaplain, began to decorate the conversation. Conscious of a deepening disgust with his environment, and of an overwhelming sense of isolation, Barry cast vainly about for a means of escape. Of military etiquette he was ignorant; hence he could only wait in deepening disgust for the O. C. to give the signal to rise. How long he could have endured is doubtful, but release came in a startling, and, to most of the members of the mess, a truly horrifying manner.

In one of those strange silences that fall upon even the noisiest of companies, Colonel Leighton, under the influence of a somewhat liberal indulgence in his whisky bottle, began the relation of a tale of very doubtful flavour. In the midst of the laughter that followed the tale, Barry rose to his feet, his face white and his eyes aflame, and in a voice vibrating with passion, said:

“May I be excused, sir?”

“Why, certainly,” said the colonel pleasantly, adding after a moment’s hesitation, “is there anything wrong, Dunbar? Are you ill?”

“No, sir.” Barry’s voice had the resonant quality of a cello string. “I mean, yes, sir,” he corrected. “I am ill. The atmosphere surrounding such a tale is nauseating to me.”

In the horrified silence that followed his remark, he walked out from the room. Upon his ears, as he stood in the ante-room, trembling with the violence of his passion, a burst of laughter fell. A sudden wrath like a hot flame swept his body. He wheeled in his tracks, tore open the door, and with head high and face set, strode to his place at the table and sat down.

Astonishment beyond all words held the company in tense stillness. From Barry’s face they looked toward the colonel, who, too dumfounded for speech or action, sat gazing at his chaplain. Then from the end of the table a few places down from Barry, a voice was heard.

“Feel better, Dunbar?” The cool, clear voice cut through the tense silence like the zip of a sword.

“I do, thank you, sir,” looking him straight in the eye.

“The fresh air, doubtless,” continued the cool voice. “I always find myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective antidote for threatening vertigo. I remember once–” continued the speaker, dropping into a conversational tone, and leaning across the table slightly toward Barry, “I was in the room with a company of men–” And the speaker entered upon a long and none too interesting relation of an experience of his, the point of which no one grasped, but the effect of which every one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in his military equipment.

“Say, the old doc is a lifesaver, sure enough,” said a young subaltern, answering to the name of “Sally,” colloquial for Salford, as he stood amid a circle of officers gathered in the smoking room a few minutes later. “A lifesaver,” repeated Sally, with emphasis. “He can have me for his laboratory collection after I’m through.”

“He is one sure singing bird,” said another sub, a stout, overgrown boy by the name of Booth. “The nerve of him,” added Booth in admiration.

“Nerve!” echoed a young captain, “but what about the pilot’s nerve?”

“Sui generis, Train, I should say,” drawled Hopeton.

“Suey, who did you say?” inquired Sally. “What’s her second name? But let me tell you I could have fallen on his neck and burst into tears of gratitude. For me,” continued Sally, glancing about the room, “I don’t hold with that dirt stuff at mess. It isn’t necessary.”

“Beastly bad form,” said Hopeton, “but, good Lord! Your Commanding Officer, Sally! There’s such a thing as discipline, you know.”

“What extraordinary thing is it that Sally knows?” inquired Major Bustead, who lounged up to the group.

“We were discussing the padre’s break, Major, which for my part,” drawled Hopeton, “I consider rotten discipline.”

“Discipline!” snorted the major. “By Gad, it was a piece of the most damnable cheek I have ever heard at a mess table. He ought to be sent to Coventry. I only hope the O. C. will get him exchanged.”

The major made no effort to subdue his voice, which was plainly audible throughout the room.

“Hush, for God’s sake,” warned Captain Train, as Barry entered the door. “Here he is.”

But Barry had caught the major’s words. For a moment he stood irresolute; then walked quietly toward the group.

“I couldn’t help hearing you, Major Bustead,” he said, in a voice pleasant and under perfect control. “I gather you were referring to me.”

“I was, sir,” said the major defiantly.

“And why should I be sent to Coventry, or exchanged, may I ask?” Barry’s voice was that of an interested outsider.

“Because,” stuttered the Major, “I consider, sir, that–that–you have been guilty of a piece of damnable impertinence toward your Commanding Officer. I never heard anything like it in my life. Infernal cheek, I call it, sir.”

While the major was speaking, Barry stood listening with an air of respectful attention.

“I wonder!” he said, after a moment’s thought. “If I thought I had been impertinent, I should at once apologise. But, sir, do you think it is part of my duty to allow any man, even my Commanding Officer, to–pardon the disgusting metaphor, it is not so disgusting as the action complained of–to spit in my soup, and take it without protest? Do you, sir?”

“I–you–” The major grew very red in the face. “You need to learn your place in this battalion, sir.”

“I do,” said Barry, still preserving his quiet voice and manner. “I want to learn–I am really anxious to learn it. Do you mind answering my question?” His tone was that of a man who is earnestly but quite respectfully seeking information from a superior officer.

“Your question, sir?” stuttered the major, “your–your–question. Damn your question, and yourself too.”

The major turned abruptly away. Barry heard him quite unmoved, stood looking after him in silence a moment or two, then, shaking his head, with a puzzled expression on his face, moved slowly away from the group.

“Oh, my aunt Caroline,” breathed Sally into his friend Hopeton’s ear, resting heavily meanwhile against his shoulder. “What a score! What a score!”

“A bull, begad! a clean bull!” murmured Hopeton, supporting his friend out of the room as he added, “A little fresh air, as a preventative of vertigo, as the old doc says, eh, Sally.”

“Good Lord, is he just a plain ass, or what?” inquired young Booth, his eye following Barry down the room.

“Ass! A mule, I should say. And one with a good lot of kick in him,” replied Captain Train. “I don’t know that I care for that kind of an animal, though.”

Before many hours had passed, the whole battalion had received with undiluted joy an account of the incident, for though the Commanding Officer was popular with his men, to have him called down at his own mess by one of his own officers was an event too thrilling to give anything but unalloyed delight to those who had to suffer in silence similar indignities at the hands of their officers.

A notable exception in the battalion, however, was Sergeant Major McFetteridge, who, because of his military experience, and of his reputation as a disciplinarian, had been recently transferred to the battalion. To the sergeant major this act of Barry’s was but another and more flagrant example of his fondness for “buttin’ in,” and the sergeant major let it be known that he strongly condemned the chaplain for what he declared was an unheard of breach of military discipline.

Of course there were others who openly approved, and who admired the chaplain’s “nerve in standing up to the old man.” In their opinion he was entirely justified in what he had said. The O. C. had insulted him, and every officer at the mess, by his off-colour story, but on the whole the general result of the incident was that Barry’s life became more and more one of isolation from both officers and men. For this reason and because of a haunting sense of failure the months of training preceding the battalion’s departure for England were for Barry one long and almost uninterrupted misery. It seemed impossible to establish any point of contact with either the officers or the men. In their athletics, in their social gatherings, in their reading, he was quietly ignored and made to feel that he was in no way necessary. An impalpable but very real barrier prevented his near approach to those whom he was so eager to serve.

This unexpressed opposition was quickened into active hostility by the chaplain’s uncompromising attitude on the liquor question. By the army regulations, the battalion canteen was dry, but in spite of this many, both of the officers and the men, freely indulged in the use of intoxicating drink. The effect upon discipline was, of course, deplorable, and in his public addresses as well as private conversation, Barry constantly denounced these demoralising habits, winning thereby the violent dislike of those especially affected, and the latent hostility of the majority of the men who agreed with the sergeant major in resenting the chaplain’s “buttin’ in.”

It was, therefore, with unspeakable joy that Barry learned that the battalion was warned for overseas service. Any change in his lot would be an improvement, for he was convinced that he had reached the limit of wretchedness in the exercise of his duty as chaplain of the battalion.

In this conviction, however, he was mistaken. On shipboard, he discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk, indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course, he could not confide to Harry the misery of his body, or the deeper misery of his soul.

It was Harry, however, that brought relief, for it was he that called the M. O. to his officer’s bedside. The M. O. was shocked to find the chaplain in a state of extreme physical weakness, and mental depression. At once, he gave orders that Barry should be removed to his own stateroom, which was large and airy and open to the sea breezes. The effect was immediately apparent, for the change of room, and more especially the touch of human sympathy, did much to restore Barry to his normal health and spirits. A friendship sprang up between the M. O. and the chaplain. With this friendship a new interest came into Barry’s life, and with surprising rapidity he regained both his physical and mental tone.

The doctor took him resolutely in hand, pressed him to take his part in the daily physical drill, induced him to share the daily programme of sports, and, best of all, discovering a violin on board, insisted on his taking a place on the musical programme rendered nightly in the salon. As might be expected, his violin won him friends among all of the music lovers on board ship, and life for Barry began once more to be bearable.

Returning strength, however, recalled him to the performance of his duties as chaplain, and straightway in the exercise of what he considered his duty, he came into conflict with no less a personage than the sergeant major himself. The trouble arose over his batman, Harry Hobbs.

Harry was a man who, in his youthful days, had been a diligent patron of the London music halls, and in consequence had become himself an amateur entertainer of very considerable ability. His sailor’s hornpipes, Irish jigs, his old English North-country ballads and his coster songs were an unending joy to his comrades. Their gratitude and admiration took forms that proved poor Harry’s undoing, and besides some of them took an unholy joy in sending the chaplain’s batman to his officer incapable of service.

Barry’s indignation and grief were beyond words. He dealt faithfully with the erring Hobbs, as his minister, as his officer, as chaplain, but the downward drag of his environment proved too great for his batman’s powers of resistance. Once and again Barry sought the aid of the sergeant major to rescue Harry from his downward course, but the old sergeant major was unimpressed with the account of Harry’s lapses.

“Is your batman unfit for duty, sir?” he inquired.

“Yes, he is, often,” said Barry indignantly.

“Did you report him, sir?” inquired the sergeant major.

“No, I did not.”

“Then, sir, I am afraid that until you do your duty I can do nothing,” answered the sergeant major, with suave respect.

“If you did your duty,” Barry was moved to say, “then Hobbs would not need to be reported. The regulations governing that canteen should prevent these frequent examples of drunkenness, which are a disgrace to the battalion.”

“Do I understand, sir,” inquired the sergeant major, with quiet respect, “that you are accusing me of a failure in duty?”

“I am saying that if the regulations were observed my batman and others would not be so frequently drunk, and the enforcing of these regulations, I understand, is a part of your duty.”

“Then, sir,” replied the sergeant major, “perhaps I had better report myself to the Commanding Officer.”

“You can please yourself,” said Barry, shortly, as he turned away.

“Very good, sir,” replied the sergeant major. “I shall report myself at once.”

The day following, the chaplain received an order to appear before the O. C. in the orderly room.

“Captain Dunbar, I understand that you are making a charge against Sergeant Major McFetteridge,” was Colonel Leighton’s greeting.

“I am making no charge against any one, sir,” replied Barry quietly.

“What do you say to that, Sergeant Major McFetteridge?”

In reply, the sergeant major gave a full and fair statement of the passage between the chaplain and himself the day before.

“Is this correct, Captain Dunbar?” asked the O. C.

“Substantially correct, sir, except that the sergeant major is here on his own suggestion, and on no order of mine.”

“Then I understand that you withdraw your charge against the sergeant major.”

“I withdraw nothing, sir. I had no intention of laying a charge, and I have laid no charge against the sergeant major; but at the same time I have no hesitation in saying that the regulations governing the canteen are not observed, and, as I understand that the responsibility for enforcing these regulations is in the sergeant major’s hands, in that sense I consider that he has failed in his duty.”

But the sergeant major was too old a soldier to be caught napping. He had his witnesses ready at hand to testify that the canteen was conducted according to regulations, and that if the chaplain’s batman or any others took more liquor than they should, neither the corporal in charge of the canteen nor the sergeant major was to be blamed.

“All I can say, sir,” replied Barry, “is that soldiers are frequently drunk on this ship, and I myself have seen them when the worse for liquor going into the canteen.”

“And did you report these men to their officers or to me, Captain Dunbar, or did you report the corporal in charge of the canteen?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Then sir, do you know that you have been guilty of serious neglect of duty?” said the colonel sternly.

“Do I understand, sir, that it is my duty to report to you every man I see the worse for liquor on this ship?”

“Most certainly,” replied the colonel, emphatically. “Every breach of discipline must be reported.”

“I understood, sir, that an officer had a certain amount of discretion in a matter of this kind.”

“Where did you get that notion?” inquired the colonel. “Let me tell you that you are wrong. Discretionary powers lie solely with me.”

“Then, sir, I am to understand that I must report every man whom I see the worse for liquor?”

“Certainly, sir,”

“And every officer, as well, sir?”

The colonel hesitated a moment, fumbled with his papers, and then blurted out:

“Certainly, sir. And let me say, Captain Dunbar, that an officer, especially an officer in your position, ought to be very careful in making a charge against a N. C. O., more particularly the sergeant major of his battalion. Nothing is more calculated to drag down discipline. The case is dismissed.”

“Sir,” said Barry, maintaining his place before the table. “May I ask one question?”

“The case is dismissed, Captain Dunbar. What do you want?” asked the colonel brusquely.

“I want to be quite clear as to my duty, in the future, sir. Do I understand that if any man or officer is found under the influence of liquor, anywhere in this ship, and at any hour of the day or night, he is to be reported at once to the orderly room, even though that officer should be, say, even the adjutant or yourself?” Barry said, gazing up at the colonel with a face in which earnestness and candour were equally blended.

The colonel gazed back at him with a face in which rage and perplexity were equally apparent. For some moments, he was speechless, while the whole orderly room held its breath.

“I mean–that you–you understand–of course,” stuttered the colonel, “that an officer must use common sense. He must be damned sure of what he says, in other words,” said the colonel, rushing his speech.

“But, sir,” continued Barry.

“Oh, go to the devil, sir,” roared the colonel. “The case is dismissed.”

Barry saluted and left the room.

“Is the man an infernal and condemned fool, or what is the matter with him?” exclaimed the colonel, turning to his adjutant in a helpless appeal, while the orderly room struggled with its grins.

“The devil only knows,” said Major Bustead. “He beats me. He is an interfering and impertinent ass, in my opinion, but what else he is, I don’t know.”

It is fair to say that the sergeant major bore the chaplain no grudge for his part in the affair. The whole battalion, however, soon became possessed of the tale, adorned and expanded to an unrecognisable extent, and revelled in ecstasy over the discomfort of the C. O. The consensus of opinion was that on the whole the sergeant major had come off with premier honours, and as between the “old man” and the “Sky Pilot,” as Barry was coming to be called, it was about an even break. As for the Pilot, he remained more than ever a mystery, and on the whole, the battalion was inclined to leave him alone.

The chaplain, however, had partially, at least, achieved his aim, in that the regulations governing the canteen were more strictly enforced, to the vast improvement of discipline generally, and to the immense advantage of Harry Hobbs in particular.

Soon after this, another event occurred which aided materially in bringing about this same result, and which also led to a modification of opinion in the battalion in regard to their chaplain.

To the civilian soldier the punctilio of military etiquette is frequently not only a bore, but at times takes on the appearance of wilful insult which no grown man should be expected to tolerate. To the civilian soldier born and brought up in wide spaces of the far Northwest this is especially the case.

It is not surprising, therefore, that McCuaig, fresh from his thirty-five years of life in the Athabasca wilds, should find the routine of military discipline extremely irksome and the niceties of military etiquette as from a private to an officer not only foolish but degrading both to officer and man. Under the patient shepherding of Barry’s father, he had endured much without protest or complaint, but, with the advent of Sergeant Major McFetteridge, with his rigid military discipline and his strict insistence upon etiquette, McCuaig passed into a new atmosphere. To the freeborn and freebred recruit from the Athabasca plains, the stiff and somewhat exaggerated military bearing of the sergeant major was at first a source of quiet amusement, later of perplexity, and finally of annoyance. For McFetteridge and his minutiae of military discipline McCuaig held only contempt. To him, the whole business was a piece of silly nonsense unworthy of serious men.

It was inevitable that the sergeant major should sooner or later discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private.

It took McCuaig some days to discover that in these frequent fatigues and special duties, he was undergoing punishment, but once made, the discovery wrought in him a cold and silent rage, which drove him to an undue and quite unwonted devotion to the canteen, which in turn transformed the reserved, self-controlled man of the wilds into a demonstrative, disorderly and quarrelsome “rookie” aching for trouble.

Under these circumstances, an outburst was inevitable. Corporal Ferry, in charge of the canteen, furnished the occasion.

“No more for you, McCuaig. You’ve got more aboard now than you can carry.”

To the injury of being denied another beer was added the insult of suggesting his inability to carry what he had. This to a man of McCuaig’s experience in every bar and camp and roadhouse from Edmonton to the Arctic circle, was not to be endured.

He leaned over the improvised bar, until his face almost touched the corporal’s.

“What?” he ejaculated, but in the single expletive there darted out such concentrated fury, that the little corporal sprang back as from a striking snake.

“You can’t have any more beer, McCuaig,” said the corporal, from a safe distance.

“Watch me, sonny!” replied McCuaig.

With a single sweep of his hand, he snatched two bottles from the ledge behind the corporal’s head. Holding one aloft, he knocked the top off the other, drank its contents slowly and smashed the empty bottle at the spot where the corporal’s head had been; knocked the top off the second bottle and was proceeding to drink it, in a more or less leisurely fashion.

“Private Timms! Private Mulligan!” shouted Corporal Ferry, reappearing from beneath the counter. “Arrest that man!”

“Wait, sonny; give me a chance,” cried McCuaig, in a wild, high, singsong voice. Lifting his bottle to his lips, he continued to drink slowly, keeping his eye upon the two privates, who were considering the best method of carrying out their orders.

“There, sonny, fill that up again,” cried McCuaig, good-naturedly, when he had finished his drink, tossing the second bottle at the head of the corporal, who, being on the alert, again made a successful disappearance.

“Now, then, boys, come on,” said McCuaig, backing toward the wall, and dropping his hands to his hips. With a curse of disappointment that he found himself without his usual weapons of defence, McCuaig raised a shout, sprang into the air, cracked his heels together in a double rap, and swinging his arms around his head, yelled:

“Come on, my boys! I’m hungry, I am! Meat! Meat! Meat!”

With each “meat,” his white teeth came together with a snap like that of a hungry wolf. Such was the beastly ferocity in his face and posture that both Private Timms and Private Mulligan, themselves men of more than average strength, paused and looked at the corporal for further orders.

“Arrest that man,” said the corporal again, preserving at the same time an attitude that revealed a complete readiness for swift disappearance. “Private McTavish,” he added, calling upon a tall Highlander who was gazing with admiring eyes upon the raging McCuaig, “assist Private Timms and Private Mulligan in arresting that man.”

“Why don’t you come yourself, sonny?” inquired McCuaig. With a swift sidestep and a swifter swoop of his long arm, he reached for the corporal, who once more found safety in swift disappearance.

At that instant, the Highlander, seeing his opportunity, flung himself upon McCuaig, and winding his arms around him, hung to him grimly, crying out:

“Get hold of his legs! Queeck! Will you?”

When the sergeant major, attracted by the unwonted uproar, appeared upon the scene, there was a man on every one of McQuaig’s limbs, and another one astride his stomach. “Heavin’ like sawlogs shootin’ a rapid,” as Private Corbin, a lumberjack from the Eau Claire, was later heard to remark.

“What is he like now?” inquired the colonel, after listening to the sergeant major’s report of the Homeric combat.

“He is in a compartment in the hold, sir, and raging like one demented. He very nearly did for Major Bustead, smashing at him with a scantling that he ripped from the ship’s timbers, sir. He still has the scantling, sir.”

“Let him cool off all night,” said the Commanding Officer, after consultation with the adjutant.

Barry, who with difficulty had restrained himself during the sergeant major’s report, slipped from the room, found the M. O., to whom he detailed the story and dragged him off to visit the raging McCuaig.

They found a corporal on guard outside.

“I would not open the door, sir. He is really dangerous.”

“Oh, rot!” replied the M. O. “Open up the door!”

“Excuse me, sir,” said the corporal, “it is not safe. At present, he is clean crazy. He is off his nut entirely.”

The M. O. stood listening at the door. From within came moaning sounds as from a suffering beast.

“That man is suffering. Open the door!” ordered the M. O. peremptorily.

The corporal, with great reluctance, unlocked the padlock, shot back the bolt, and then stood away from the door.

“It is the medical officer, McCuaig,” said the doctor, opening the door slightly.

Bang! Crash! came the scantling upon the door jamb, shattering it to pieces. The whole guard flung themselves against the door, shoved it shut, and shot the bolt.

“I warned you, sir,” said the panting corporal. “Better leave him until morning. He’s a regular devil!”

“He is no more a devil than you are, corporal,” said Barry, in a loud, clear voice. “He is one of the best men in the battalion. More than that, he is my friend, and if he spends the night there, I spend it with him.”

So saying, and before any one could stop him, Barry shot back the bolt, opened the door, and with his torchlight flashing before him, stepped inside.

“Hello, McCuaig,” he called, in a quiet, clear voice, “where are you? It’s Dunbar, you know.”

He drew the door shut after him. The corporal was for following him, but the M. O. interposed.

“Stop out!” he ordered. “Stay where you are! You have done enough mischief already.”

“But, sir, he’ll kill him!”

“This is my case,” said the M. O. sharply. “Fall back all of you, out of sight!”

Together they stood listening in awestruck silence, expecting every moment to hear sounds of conflict, and cries for help, but all they heard was the cool, even flow of a quiet voice, and after some minutes had passed, the sound of moans, mingled with a terrible sobbing.

The M. O., moving toward the corporal and his guard, said in a low tone:

“Take your men down the passage and keep them there until I call for you.”

“Sir,” began the corporal.

“Will you obey my orders?” said the M. O. “I’m in command here! Go!”

Without further words, the corporal moved his men away.

Half an hour later, the sergeant major, going his rounds, received a rude shock. In the passage leading to McCuaig’s compartment, he met four men, bearing on a stretcher toward the sick bay a long silent form.

“Who have you got there, corporal?” he inquired in a tone of kindly interest.

“McCuaig, sir.”

“McCuaig?” roared the sergeant major. “And who–“

“Medical officer’s orders.”

“Silence there,” said a sharp voice in the rear. “Carry on, men.”

And past the astonished sergeant major, the procession filed with the medical officer and the chaplain at its tail end.

After the sergeant major had made his report to the O. C., as was his duty, the M. O. was sent for. What took place at that interview was never divulged to the mess, but it was known that whereas the conversation began in very loud tones by the Officer Commanding, it ended half an hour later with the M. O. being shown out of the room by the colonel himself, who was heard to remark:

“A very fine bit of work. Tell him I want to see him when he has a few minutes, and thank you, doctor, thank you!”

“Who does the old man want to see?” inquired Sally, who, with Hopeton and Booth, happened to be passing.

“The chaplain,” snapped the M. O., going on his way.

“The chaplain? By Jove, he’s a queer one, eh?”

The M. O. turned sharply back, and coming very close to Sally, said in a wrathful voice:

“A queer one? Yes, a queer one! But if some of you damned young idiots that sniff at him had just half his guts, you’d be twice the men you are.–Shut up, Hopeton! Listen to me–” and in words of fiery rage that ran close to tears, he recounted his experience of the last hour.

“By Jove! Doc, some guts, eh?” said Sally in a low tone, as he moved away.

CHAPTER IX

SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS, AND OTHER THINGS

A long, weird blast from the fog horn, followed by two short, sharp toots, recalled Barry from his morning dream.

“Fog,” he grumbled, and turned over to re-capture the enchantment of the Athabasca rapids, and his dancing canoe.

Overhead there sounded the trampling of feet.

“Submarines, doc,” he shouted and leaped to the floor broad awake.

“What’s the row?” murmured the M. O., who was a heavy sleeper.

For answer, Barry ripped the clothes from the doctor’s bed.

“Submarines, doc,” he shouted again, and buckling on his Sam Brown, and seizing his lifebelt, he stood ready to go.

“What! your boots off, doc?”

In the orders of the day before had been an announcement that officers and men were to sleep fully dressed.

“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed the doctor, hunting through his bedclothes in desperation. “I can’t sleep in my boots. Where’s my tunic? Go on, old fellow, I’ll follow you.”

Barry held his tunic for him.

“Here you are! Wake up, doc! And here’s your Sam Brown.”

Barry dropped to lace the doctor’s boots, while the latter was buckling on the rest of his equipment.

“All right,” cried the doctor, rushing from the room and leaving his lifebelt behind him.

Barry caught up the lifebelt and followed.

“Your lifebelt, doc,” he said, as they passed up the companion way.

“Oh, I’m a peach of a soldier,” said the doctor, struggling into his lifebelt, and swearing deeply the while.

“Stop swearing, doc! It’s a waste of energy.”

“Oh, go to hell!”

“No, I prefer Heaven, if I must leave this ship, but for the present, I believe I’m needed here, and so are you, doc. Look there!”

The doctor glanced out upon the deck.

“By Jove! You’re right, old man, we are needed and badly. I say, old chap,” he said, pausing for a moment to turn to Barry, “you are a dear old thing, aren’t you?”

The deck was a mass of soldiers struggling, swearing, fighting their way to their various stations. Officers, half dressed and half awake, were rushing hither and thither, seeking their units, swearing at the men and shouting meaningless orders. Over all the stentorian voice of the sergeant major was vainly trying to make itself understood.

In the confusion the cry was raised: “We’re torpedoed! We’re going down!”

There was a great rush for the nearest boats. Men flung discipline to the winds and began fighting for a chance of their lives. It was a terrific and humiliating scene.

Suddenly, over the tumult, was heard a loud, ringing laugh.

“Oh, I say, Duff! Not that way! Not that way!”

Again came the ringing laugh.

Immediately a silence fell upon the struggling crowd, and for a moment they stood looking inquiringly at each other. That moment of silence was seized by the sergeant major. Like a trumpet his sonorous voice rang out steady and clear.

“Fall in, men! Boat quarters! Silence there!”

He followed this with sharp, intelligible commands to his N. C. O.’s. Like magic, order fell upon the turbulent, struggling crowd.

“Stand steady, you there!” roared the sergeant major, who having got control of his men, began to indulge himself in a few telling and descriptive adjectives.

In less than two minutes, the men were standing steady as a rock and the panic was passed.

“Who was it that laughed up there in that stampede?” inquired the O. C., when the officers were gathered about him in the orderly room.

“I think it was the Sky Pilot, sir–the chaplain, sir,” said Lieutenant Stewart Duff.

“Was it you that laughed, Captain Dunbar?” asked the colonel, turning upon Barry.

“Perhaps I did, sir. I’m sorry if–“

“Sorry!” exclaimed the colonel. “Dammit, sir, you saved the situation for us all. Who told you it was a false alarm?”

“No one, sir. I didn’t know it was a false alarm. I was looking at Lieutenant Duff–” He checked himself promptly. “I mean, sir– well, it seemed a good place to laugh, so I just let it come.”

The colonel’s eyes rested with curious inquiry upon the serene face of the chaplain, with its glowing eyes and candid expression. “A good place for a laugh? It was a damned good place for a laugh, and gentlemen, I thank God I have one officer who finds in the face of sudden danger a good place for a laugh. And now I have something to say to you.”

The O. C.’s remarks did not improve the officers’ opinion of themselves, and they slunk out of the room–no other word properly describes the cowed and shamed appearance of that company of men– they slunk out of the room. They had failed to play the part of British officers in the face of sudden peril.

In his speech to the men, the C. O. made only a single reference to the incident, but that reference bit deep.

“Men, I am thoroughly ashamed and disappointed. You acted, not like soldiers, but like a herd of steers. The difference between a herd of steers and a battalion of soldiers, in the face of sudden danger, is only this:–the steers break blindly for God knows where, and end piled up over a cut bank; soldiers stand steady listening for the word of command.”

If the O. C. handled the men with a light hand, the sergeant major did not. His tongue rasped them to the raw. No one knows a soldier as does his N. C. O., and no N. C. O. is qualified to set forth the soldier’s characteristics with the intimate knowledge and adequate fluency of the sergeant major. One by one he peeled from their shivering souls the various layers of their moral cuticle, until they stood, in their own and in each other’s eyes, objects of commiseration.

“There’s just one thing more I wad like ta say to ye.” The sergeant major’s tendency to Doric was more noticeable in his moments of deeper feeling, “but it’s something for you lads to give heed ta. When ye were scrammlin’ up yonder, like a lot o’ mavericks at a brandin’, and yowlin’ like a bunch o’ coyotes, there was one man in the regiment who could laugh. There’s lots o’ animals that the Almighty made can yowl, but there’s only one can laugh, and that’s a mon. For God’s sake, men, when ye’re in a tight place, try a laugh.”

For some weeks after this event the chaplain was known throughout the battalion as “the man that can laugh,” and certain it is that from that day there existed between the M. O. and the chaplain a new bond of friendship.

As the ship advanced deeper into the submarine zone, the sole topic of thought and of conversation came to be the convoy. Where was that convoy anyway? While the daylight lasted, a thousand pairs of eyes swept the horizon, and the intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal of the protecting convoy.

While still a day and a night out from land, Barry awoke in the dim light of a misty morning, and proceeded to the deck for his constitutional. There he fell in with Captain Neil Fraser and Captain Hopeton pacing up and down.

“Come along, Pilot!” said Captain Neil, heartily, between whom and the chaplain during the last few days a cordial friendship had sprung up. “We’re looking for submarines. This is the place and the time for Fritz, if he is going to get us at all.”

Arm in arm they made the circle of the deck. The mist, lying like a bank upon the sea, shifted the horizon to within a thousand yards of the ship.

“I wish I knew just what lies behind that bank there,” said Captain Hopeton, pointing over the bow.

For some moments they stood, peering idly into the mist.

“By Jove, there IS something there,” said Barry, who had a hawk’s eye.

“You’ve got ’em too, eh,” laughed Hopeton. “I’ve had ’em for the last forty-eight hours. I’ve been ‘seein’ things’ all night.”

“But there is,” insisted Barry, pointing over the port bow.

“What is it like?” asked Captain Neil, while Hopeton ran for his glass.

“I’ll tell you what it’s like–exactly like the eye of an oyster in its pulp. And, by Jove, there’s another!” added Barry excitedly.

“I can’t see anything,” said Captain Neil.

“But I can,” insisted Barry. “Look there, Hopeton!”

Hopeton fixed his glass upon the mist, where Barry pointed.

“You’re right! There is something, and there are two of them.”

“Give the Pilot the glass, Hopeton,” said Neil. “He’s got a good eye.”

“There are two ships, boys, as I’m a sinner, but what they are, I don’t know,” cried Barry in a voice tense with excitement. “Here, Neil, take the glass. You know about ships.”

Long and earnestly, Captain Neil held the glass in the direction indicated.

“Boys, by all that’s holy, they’re destroyers,” he said at length in a low voice.

Even as they gazed, the two black dots rapidly took shape, growing out of the mist into two sea monsters, all head and shoulders, boring through the seas, each flinging high a huge comb of white spray, and with an indescribable suggestion of arrogant, resistless power, bearing down upon the ship at furious speed.

“Destroyers!” shouted Captain Neil, in a voice that rang through the ship. “By gad, destroyers!”

There was no question of friend or foe; only Great Britain’s navy rode over those seas immune.

Upon every hand the word was caught up and passed along. In a marvellously short space of time, the rails, the boats, the rigging, all the points of vantage were thronged with men, roaring, waving, cheering, like mad.

With undiminished speed, each enveloped in its cloud of spray, the destroyers came, one on each side, rushed foaming past, swept in a circle around the ship and took their stations alongside, riding quietly at half speed like bulldogs tugging at a leash.

“Great heavens, what a sight!” At the croak in Hopeton’s voice, the others turned and looked at him.

“You’ve got it too, eh!” said Captain Neil, clearing his own throat.

“I’ve got something, God knows!” answered Hopeton, wiping his eyes.

“I, too,” said Barry, swallowing the proverbial lump. “Those little–little–“

“Bulldogs,” suggested Hopeton.

“Bulldog pups,” said Captain Neil.

“That’s it,” said Barry. “That’s what they are, little bulldog pups, got me by the throat all right.”

“Me, too, by gad!” said Captain Neil. “I should have howled out loud in another minute.”

“Listen to the boys!” cried Barry.

From end to end of the ship rose one continuous roar, “Good old Navy! Good old John Bull!” while Hopeton, openly abandoning the traditional reserve and self-control supposed to be a characteristic of the English public school boy, climbed upon the rail and, hanging by a stanchion with one hand, and with the other frantically waving his cap over his head, continued to shout:

“England! England! England forever!”

Then above the cheering cries was heard the battalion band, and from a thousand throats in solemn chant there rose the Empire’s national anthem, “God Save the King.”

That night they steamed into old Plymouth town, and the following morning were anchored safe at Devonport dock. Strict orders held the officers and men on board ship until arrangements for debarkation should be completed, but to Barry and the doctor, the Commanding Officer gave shore leave for an hour.

“And I would suggest,” he said, “that you go and have a talk with that old boy walking up and down the dock there. Yarn to him about Canada, he’s wild to know about it.”

The old naval officer was indeed “wild to know about Canada,” so that the greater part of their shore leave was spent in answering his questions, and eager though he was to explore the old historic town, before Barry knew it, he was in the full tide of a glowing description of his own Province of Alberta, extolling its great ranches, its sweeping valleys, its immense resources.

“And to think you are all British out there,” exclaimed the old salt.

“We’re all British, of course,” replied Barry, “but not all from Britain.”

“I know, I know,” said the officer, “but that only makes it more wonderful.”

“Wonderful! Why, why should it be wonderful?”

“Yes, wonderful. Oh, you Canadians,” cried the old salt, impulsively stretching out his hand to Barry. “You Canadians!”

Surprised, Barry glanced at his face. Those hard blue eyes were brimming with tears; the leatherlike skin was working curiously about the mouth.

“Why, sir, I don’t quite understand what you mean,” said Barry.

“No, and you never will. Think of it, rushing three thousand miles–“

“Five thousand for some of us,” interrupted Barry.

“Fancy that! Rushing five thousand miles in this way, to help old mother England, and all of your own free will. We didn’t ask it of you. Though, by heaven, we’re grateful for it. I find it difficult, sir, to speak quietly of this.”

Not until that moment had Barry caught the British point of view. To him, as to all Canadians, it had only been a perfectly reasonable and natural thing that when the Empire was threatened, they should spring into the fight. They saw nothing heroic in that. They were doing their simple duty.

“But think of the wonder of it,” said the naval officer again, “that Canada should feel in that way its response to the call of the blood.”

The old man’s lips were still quivering.

“That is true, sir,” said the M. O., joining in the talk, “but there is something more. Frankly, my opinion is that the biggest thing, sir, with some of us in Canada, is not that the motherland was in need of help, though, of course, we all feel that, but that the freedom of the world is threatened, and that Canada, as one of the free nations of the world, must do her part in its defence.”

“A fine spirit,” said the old gentleman.

“This fight,” continued the M. O., “is ours, you see, as well as yours, and we hate a bully.”

The old salt swore a great oath, and said:

“You are pups of the old breed, and you run true to type. I’m glad to know you, gentlemen,” he continued, shaking them warmly by the hand.

After they had gone a few steps he called Barry back to him.

“That’s my card, sir. I should like you to come to see me in London sometime when you are on leave.”

Barry glanced at the card and read, “Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R.”

“It was very decent of the old boy,” he said to the Commanding Officer afterwards, when recounting the interview. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever use the card, but I do think he really meant it.”

“Meant it,” exclaimed the Commanding Officer. “Why, Dunbar, I’m an old country man, and I know. Make no mistake. These people, and especially these naval people, do not throw their cards loosely about. You will undoubtedly hear from him.”

“It’s not likely,” replied Barry, “but the old gentleman is great stuff, all right.”

During the long, sunny spring day, their dinky little train whisked them briskly through the sweet and restful beauty of the English southern counties. To these men, however, from the wide sunbaked, windswept plains of western Canada, the English landscape suggested a dainty picture, done in soft greys and greens, with here and there a vivid splash of colour, where the rich red soil broke through the green. But its tiny fields set off with hedges, and lines of trees, its little, clean-swept villages, with their picturesque church spires, its parks with deer that actually stood still to look at you, its splendid manor houses, and, at rare intervals, its turreted castles, gave these men, fresh from the raw, unmeasured and unmade west, a sense of unreality. To them it seemed a toy landscape for children to play with, but, as they passed through the big towns and cities with their tall, clustering chimneys, their crowding populations, with unmistakable evidences of great wealth, their shipping, where the harbours bit into the red coast line, there began to waken in them the thought that this tiny England, so beautifully finished, and so neatly adorned, was something mightier than they had ever known.

In these tiny fields, in these clean swept villages, in these manor houses, in these castles, in factory and in shipyard, were struck deep the roots of an England whose greatness they had never yet guessed.

The next afternoon brought them to the great military camp at Shorncliffe, in a misty rain, hungry, for their rations had been exhausted early in the day, weary from ship and train travel, and eager to get their feet once again on mother earth.

At the little station they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for something to happen, they knew not what. The R. T. O., a young Imperial officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had some occult reason for delaying their departure. So, while the night grew every moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their kit-bags or found such shelter as they could in the tiny station, or in the lee of the “goods trains” blocking the railroad tracks, growing more indignant and more disgusted with the British high command, the war in general, and registering with increasing intensity vows of vengeance against the Kaiser, who, in the last analysis, they considered responsible for their misery.

At length the “brass hat” for whom they had been waiting appeared upon the scene, not in the slightest degree apologetic, but very businesslike, and with a highly emphasised military manner. After a little conversation between the brass hat and their Commanding Officer, the latter gave the command and off they set in the darkness for their first route march on English soil.

Through muddy roads and lanes, over fields, slushy and sodden, up hill and down dale, they plodded steadily along. At the rear of the colunm marched Barry with the M. O.

Long before they reached their destination, their conversation had given out, the M. O. sucking sullenly at his pipe, the bowl upside down. The rear end of the column was very frayed and straggling. Why it is that a perfectly fit company will invariably fray out if placed at the rear of a marching column, no military expert has quite succeeded in satisfactorily explaining.

As he tramped along in the dark by the side of the road, the M. O. stumbled over a soldier sitting upon the soggy bank.

“Who are you?” he inquired shortly.

“Corporal Thom, sir.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m all in, sir. I’ve been sick all day, sir.”

“Why didn’t you report sick, then? Can’t you get on?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Not for a while, at least.”

“Have you any pain, any nausea?”

“No, sir, I’m just all in.”

“Do you know our route?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve got the turns down.”

“Well, come along then when you can. I’ll send back a waggon later, but don’t wait for that.”

“Yes, sir,” said Corporal Thom.

“Come on, Dunbar! We’ll send a waggon back for these stragglers. There will be a good many of them before long.”

“You go on, doc. I’ll come later,” said Barry. “I’ll catch up to you.”

But the M. O., at the various halts, waited in vain for the chaplain to appear.

On arriving at the camp, after a long struggle, he succeeded in sending back an Army Service waggon to bring in the stragglers, but just as the waggon was about to leave, he heard coming up the road, a party stepping out briskly to the music of their own whistling. In the rear of the party marched the chaplain, laden down with one man’s rifle and another man’s kit-bag.

“They’re all here, sir,” said Corporal Thom to the M. O., with a distinct note of triumph in his voice. “All here, sir,” he repeated, as he observed the sergeant major standing at the doctor’s side.

“Well done, corporal,” said the sergeant major. “You brought ’em all in? That means that no man has fallen out on our first march in this country.”

The corporal made no reply, but later on, he explained the matter to the sergeant major.

“It’s that Sky Pilot of ours, sir,” he said. “Blowed if he’d let us fall out.”

“Kept you marching, eh?”

“No, it’s his chocolate and his jaw, but more his jaw than his chocolate. He’s got lots of both. I was all in. I’d been sick all day in the train. Couldn’t eat a bite. Well, the first thing, he gives me a cake of his chocolate. Then he sets himself down in the mud beside me, and me wishin’ all the time he’d go on and leave me for the waggon to pick up. Then he gives me a cigarette, and then he begins to talk.”

“Talk, what about?”

“Damned if I know, but the first thing I knew I was tellin’ him about the broncho bustin’,–that’s my job, you know–and how I won out from Nigger Jake in the Calgary Stampede, until I was that stuck on myself that I said: ‘Well, sir, we’d better get a move on,’ and up he gets with my kit-bag on his back. By and by, we picks up another lame duck and then another, feedin’ ’em with chocolate and slingin’ his jaw, and when we was at the limit, he halts us outside one of them stone shacks and knocks at the door. ‘No soldiers here,’ snaps the red-headed angel, shuttin’ the door right in his face. Then he opens the door and steps right in where she could see him, and starts to talk to her, and us listening out in the rain. Say! In fifteen minutes we was all standin’ up to a feed of coffee and buns, and then he gets Harry Hobbs whistlin’ and singin’, and derned if we couldn’t have marched to Berlin. Say! He’s a good one, ain’t no quitter, and he won’t let nobody else be a quitter.”

And thus it came that with Corporal Thom and his derelicts the chaplain marched into a new place in the esteem of the men of his battalion, and of its sergeant major.

But of this, of course, Barry had no knowledge. He knew that he had made some little progress into the confidence of both officers and men in his battalion. He had made, too, some firm friendships which had relieved, to a certain extent, the sense of isolation and loneliness that had made his first months with the battalion so appalling. But there still remained the sense of failure inasfar as his specific duty as chaplain was concerned.

The experiences of the first weeks in England only served to deepen in him the conviction that his influence on the men against the evils which were their especial snare was as the wind against the incoming tide, beating in from the North Sea. He could make a ripple, a certain amount of fussy noise, but the tide of temptation rolled steadily onward, unchecked in its flow.

The old temptations to profanity, drink and lust, that had haunted the soldiers’ steps at home, were found to be lying in wait for them here and in aggravated form. True, in the mess and in his presence among the men there was less profanity than there had been at the first, but it filled him with a kind of rage to feel that this change was due to no sense of the evil of the habit, but solely to an unwillingness to give offence to one whom many of them were coming to regard with respect and some even with affection.

“I hate that,” he said to the M. O., to whom he would occasionally unburden his soul. “You’d think I was a kind of policeman over their morals.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said the M. O., to whom the habit of profanity was a very venial sin. “You ought to be mighty glad that your presence does act as a kind of moral prophylactic. And it does, I assure you. I confess that since I have come to be associated with you, I am conscious of a very real, and at times, distressing limitation of my vocabulary. I may not be more virtuous, but certainly I am more respectable.”

This sentiment, however, brought little comfort to the chaplain.

“I am not a policeman,” he protested, “and I am not going to play policeman to these men. I notice them shut up when I come around, but I know quite well that they turn themselves loose when I pass on, and that they feel much more comfortable. I am not and will not be their policeman.”

“What then would you be?” inquired the M. O.

Barry pondered this question for some time.

“To tell the truth,” he said, at length, “I confess, I don’t quite know. I wish I did, doc, on my soul. One thing I do know, the men are no better here in their morals than they were at home.”

“Better? They are worse, by Jove!” exclaimed the M. O. “Look at the daily crime-sheet! Look at that daily orderly room parade. It’s something fierce, and it’s getting worse.”

“The wet canteen?” inquired Barry, who had lost prestige with some in the battalion by reason of the strenuous fight he had made against its introduction since coming to England. Not that the men cared so much for their liquor, but they resented the idea that they were denied privileges enjoyed by other battalions.

“The wet canteen?” echoed the doctor. “No, you know I opposed, as you did, the introduction of the wet canteen, although not upon the same grounds. I regard it as a perfect nuisance in camp. It is the centre of every disorder, it is subversive of discipline; it materially increases my sick parade. But it is not the wet canteen that is chiefly responsible for the growing crime-sheet and orderly room parade. It is those damned–I don’t apologise–“

“Please don’t. Say it again!” exclaimed Barry fervently.

“Those damned pubs,” continued the M. O., “stuck at every crossroads in this country. They’re the cause of ninety per cent. of the drunkenness in our army, and more than that, I want to give you another bit of information that came out at our M. O. conference this week, namely that these pubs account for ninety per cent. of our tent hospital cases.”

“Ninety per cent., doctor? That’s surely high.”

“I would have said so, but I am giving you the unanimous verdict of the twenty-six medical officers at the conference. Cut out the damned beer–and you know I take my share of it–cut out the beer and ninety per cent. of the venereal disease goes. With me it is not a question of morality but of efficiency.” Here the M. O. sprang from his chair and began to pace the hut. “This is the one thing in this army business that makes me wild. We come over here to fight–these boys are willing to fight–and by gad they will fight! They go out for a walk, they have a few beers together, their inhibitory powers are paralysed, opportunity comes their way, and they wake up a little later diseased. God in heaven! I love this dear old England, and I would die for her if need be, but may God Almighty damn her public houses, and all the infernal and vicious customs which they nourish.”

“Thank you, doctor, go right on,” said Barry. “I was at the tent hospital this week for the first time. Ever since, I have been wanting to say what you have said just now. But what did your M. O. conference do about it?”

“What could we do? The Home Office blocks the way. Well, I’ve got that off my stomach, and I feel better,” added the M. O., with a slight laugh.

“But, doc, I want to say this,” said Barry. “I don’t believe that the percentage of men who go in for this sort of thing is large. I’ve been making inquiries from our chaplains and they all agree that we have a mighty fine and clean body of men in our Canadian army.”

“Right you are! Of course, it is only a small percentage, a very small percentage–a much smaller percentage than in our civilian population at home. But small as it is, it is just that much too many. Hell and blazes! These men are soldiers. They have left their homes, and their folks, to fight. Their people–their people are the best in our land. There’s that young Pentland. A finer young chap never threw a leg over a broncho. He’s in that tent hospital to-night. I know his mother. Three sons she has given. Oh, damn it all,” the doctor’s voice broke at this point. “I can’t speak quietly. Their mothers have given them up, to death, if need be, but not to this rotten, damnable disease. Look here, Pilot!” The doctor pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Barry. “You have often spoken against this thing, but next time you break loose, give them merry hell over it. You can’t make it too hot.”

Long Barry sat silent overborne by the fury of the doctor’s passionate indictment.

“Cheer up, old chap!” said the doctor, when his wrath had somewhat subsided. “We’ll lick the Kaiser and beat the devil yet.”

“But, doctor, what can I do?” implored Barry. “That’s part of my job, surely. Part of the job of the chaplain service, I mean. Oh, that is the ghastly tragedy of this work of mine. Somehow I can’t get at it. These evils exist. I can speak against them and make enemies, but the things go on just as before.”

“Don’t you believe it, Pilot, not quite as before. Behold how you have already checked my profanity. Even the old man has pretty much cut it out at mess. You don’t know where they would have been but for you. Cheer up! Our wings may not be visible but, on the other hand, there are no signs of horns and hoofs.”

“Doctor, one thing I’ll do,” cried Barry, with a sudden inspiration “We’ve a meeting of the chaplains’ corps to-morrow. I’ll give them your speech.”

“Expurgated edition, I hope,” said the M. O.

“No, I’ll put in every damn I can remember, and, if need be, a few more.”

“Lord, I’d like to be there, old boy!” said the doctor, fervently.

Barry was as good as his word. At the meeting of the chaplains’ corps, the time was mainly taken up in routine business, dealing with arrangements for religious services at the various camps within the area.

At the close of the meeting, however, one of the chaplains rose and announced that he had a matter to bring to the attention of the corps–a matter of the highest importance, which demanded their immediate and serious attention, and which they dared not any longer ignore. It was the matter of venereal disease in our Canadian army.

His statistics and illustrative incidents gripped hard the hearts of the men present. He closed with a demand that steps be taken that day to deal with the situation. The Canadian people had entrusted them with the care of their boys’ souls. “Their souls,” he cried. “I say our first duty is to their bodies. I am not saying the percentage is large. It is not as large as in the civilian population at home. But why any? We must care for these men’s bodies. They fight with their bodies.”