from the hot furnace of the pier into the hotter prison of the ship. The great ships, with their motley jagged patches of deception, waited in the stream: they slid in and out in unending squadrons.
Sometimes the troops were black—labor regiments from Georgia and Alabama; big gorilla bucks from Texas. They gleamed with sweat and huge rich laughter: they were obedient as children and called their cursing officers “boss.”
“And don’t you call me’boss’again, you bastards!” screamed a young Tennessee lieutenant, who had gone slowly insane during the moving, as he nursed his charges through hell. They grinned at him cheerfully, with affection, like good obedient children, as he stamped, raving, up and down the pier. From time to time they goaded him into a new frenzy with complaints about lost hats, bayonets, small arms, and papers. Somehow he found things for them; somehow he cursed his way through, keeping them in order. They grinned affectionately, therefore, and called him boss.
“And what in Jesus’name have you done now?” he yelled, as a huge black sergeant with several enlisted men, who had gathered at the examiner’s table, burst suddenly into loud roars of grief.
The fiery lieutenant rushed at the table, cursing.
The sergeant and several enlisted men, all Texas darkies, had come away from camp without a clean bill of health: they were venereals and had not been cured.
“Boss,” blubbered the big black sergeant, “we wants to go to France. We don’t want to git lef’in dis Gawd-dam hole.”
(Nor do I blame them, thought Eugene.)
“I’ll kill you! So help me God, I’ll kill you!” screamed the officer, hurling his trim cap upon the ground and stamping upon it. But, a moment later, with a medical officer he was leading them away for examination behind the great wall of sacked oats. Five minutes later they emerged. The negroes were cavorting with joy: they pressed around their fierce commander, seizing and kissing his hand, fawning upon him, adoring him.
“You see,” said the dish-faced checker, while he and Eugene watched, “that’s what it takes to hold a crowd of niggers. You can’t be nice to’em. They’d do anything for that guy.”
