A Volunteer Poilu | Page 2

of glancing radiance
from the viscous, oily surface of the foul basin in which she lay inert;
the air was full of sounds, the wheezing of engines, the rattling of
cog-checks, and the rumble of wheels and hoofs which swept, in sultry
puffs of noise and odor, from the pavements on the land. Falling from
the exhausts, a round, silvery-white cascade poured into the dark lane
between the wharf and the deck, and sounded a monotonous, roaring
underchord to the intermingled dins. At the sun-bathed bow, a derrick
gang lowered bags of flour into the open well of the hold; there were
commands in French, a chugging, and a hissing of steam, and a giant's
clutch of dusty, hundred-kilo flour-bags from Duluth would swing from
the wharf to the Rochambeau, sink, and disappear. In some way the
unfamiliar language, and the sight of the thickset, French sailor-men, so
evidently all of one race, made the Rochambeau, moored in the shadow
of the sky-scrapers, seem mysteriously alien. But among the workers in
the hold, who could be seen when they stood on the floor of the open
hatchway, was a young, red-headed, American longshoreman clad in
the trousers part of a suit of brown-check overalls; sweat and grime had
befouled his rather foolish, freckled face, and every time that a bunch
of flour-bags tumbled to the floor of the well, he would cry to an
invisible somebody--"More dynamite, Joe, more dynamite!"
Walking side by side, like ushers in a wedding procession, two of the
ship's officers made interminable rounds of the deck. Now and then
they stopped and looked over the rail at the loading operations, and
once in low tones they discussed the day's communiqué. "Pas grand'

chose" (nothing of importance), said he whom I took to be the elder, a
bearded, seafaring kind of man. "We have occupied a crater in the
Argonne, and driven back a German patrol (une patrouille Boche) in
the region of Nomény." The younger, blond, pale, with a wispy yellow
mustache, listened casually, his eyes fixed on the turbulence below.
The derrick gang were now stowing away clusters of great wooden
boxes marked the Something Arms Company. "My brother says that
American bullets are filled with powder of a very good quality" (d'une
très bonne qualité), remarked the latter. "By the way, how is your
brother?" asked the bearded man. "Very much better," answered the
other; "the last fragment (éclat) was taken out of his thigh just before
we left Bordeaux." They continued their walk, and three little French
boys wearing English sailor hats took their places at the rail.
As the afternoon advanced, a yellow summer sun, sinking to a level
with the upper fringes of the city haze, gave a signal for farewells; and
little groups retired to quieter corners for good-byes. There was a good
deal of worrying about submarines; one heard fragments of
conversations--"They never trouble the Bordeaux route"--"Absolutely
safe, je t'assure"; and in the accents of Iowa the commanding advice,
"Now, don't worry!" "Good-bye, Jim! Good-bye, Maggie!" cried a
rotund, snappy American drummer, and was answered with cheery,
honest wishes for "the success of his business." Two young Americans
with the same identical oddity of gait walked to and fro, and a little
black Frenchman, with a frightful star-shaped scar at the corner of his
mouth, paraded lonelily. A middle-aged French woman, rouged and
dyed back to the thirties, and standing in a nimbus of perfume, wept at
the going of a younger woman, and ruined an elaborate make-up with
grotesque traceries of tears. "Give him my love," she sobbed; "tell him
that the business is doing splendidly and that he is not to buy any of
Lafitte's laces next time he goes to Paris en permission." A little later,
the Rochambeau, with slow majesty, backed into the channel, and
turned her bow to the east.
The chief interest of the great majority of her passengers was
commercial; there were American drummers keen to line their pockets
with European profits; there were French commis voyageurs who had

been selling articles of French manufacture which had formerly been
made by the Germans; there were half-official persons who had been
on missions to American ammunition works; and there was a diplomat
or two. From the sample trunks on board you could have taken
anything from a pair of boots to a time fuse. Altogether, an interesting
lot. Palandeau, a middle-aged Frenchman with a domed, bald forehead
like Socrates or Verlaine, had been in America selling eau-de-cologne.
"Then you are getting out something new?" I asked.
"Yes, and no," he answered. "Our product is the old-fashioned
eau-de-cologne water with the name 'Farina' on it."
"But in America we associate eau-de-cologne with the Germans," said I.
"Doesn't the bottle say 'Johann Maria Farina'? Surely the