Stanford Stories Part 26

The second night, Tuesday, he had sat with Cap among the coiled ropes on deck. Beyond the s.h.i.+pping, the city of hills twinkled at them, striped with long, sloping lines of dotted light; out of the blackness above, the crown of the Spreckels building made a circlet like a halo over St.

Francis and his city; across the bay slid the mysterious, luminous honeycombs of the silent ferry-boats. Far aft, the band was trying to cheer things up with a Sousa march. That very tune was being played, probably, down there where the Quadrangle, softly glowing with the faint edging of lanterns, s.h.i.+mmered in the fairy-land mystery of long palm-studded vistas, a-flutter with white dresses.

"They are saying good-bye to each other, now," said Tom, by way of a feeler.

"Humph!" said Cap. He was flat on his back, looking up at the stars. "It doesn't mean anything. When you're going to pull out across the Pacific for G.o.d knows what, then it's different."

"I didn't expect to spend this evening lying on a s.h.i.+p's deck," murmured Tom. He was thinking of what the Promenade Concert usually means to people who have been taught something by co-education. That good-bye, said in the Quadrangle when the music and the thoughtless people have gone and the lanterns blaze up and drop, one after another, and lie smoldering on the moonlit asphalt; those last words with people from whom you have concealed yourself these four years and to whom you can now afford to lay open your heart, as can the happy dead, because your ways after to-night may lie apart,--Tom knew that this good-bye does mean something, in spite of the superior announcement of Soph.o.m.ore Smith. Only it meant more to a fellow lying thinking about it among the ropes of a transport's deck, with the Spaniards in prospect.

Cap's cigarette shone like a glowworm in the shadow of the stack.

"Our good-bye supper will be sloppy weather, all right;" said he. "Six going out."

"No," answered Tom, "it won't be a drunk to-night, Cap. You haven't been in long enough. I'll bet they don't get through the first case; I'll bet it's a cry. You didn't see '95 go out."

"Well, perhaps," a.s.sented the Soph.o.m.ore. "The fellows are pretty well worked up."

Tom went back to his Freshman days.

"I remember our '95 feed in the Hall. Stanton cried that night, and Gray. I never saw them do it before." Then, more slowly, "It must be tough on a girl."

After which he was not talkative.

There was little enough, this last morning, to suggest Commencement, as he leaned on the damp rail of the s.h.i.+p and dreamed over the last few days. A voice at his elbow said:

"Captain wants you, Sergeant."

Tom started out of his reverie, and the military tilt came into his back. He was not a student bidding the College farewell; he was a sergeant at eighteen a month and lucky to get so much.

The city had awakened when he came to the rail again. There was a tense feeling abroad, a gathering excitement that grew through the morning.

All manner of water-craft fussed and fumed and dodged around the transports,--tugs, rowboats, launches and clumsy river steamers strung with flags and black with civilians. One tug that hung close by shone with more color than the others by reason of the women crowding it; Tom could discern the face of his mother looking, looking with yearning eyes that would have called him back. He drew a quick breath of surprise and his hands tightened on the black rigging. There on the tug, standing beside his mother instead of among those who were saying good-bye to the Campus, he saw the Other One.

Soon after three, the screw throbbed, moved, the craft wheeled into lines flanking the huge vessel; the noises of the city awoke:

"For the large birds of prey They'll carry you away, And you'll never see your soldiers any more."

The grey town lay back among her hills, shrieking with every manner of mechanical voice her farewell to the troops. Above this uproar rose and fell the weird sobbing of a siren and a cannon from the top of a sky-sc.r.a.per boomed in at solemn intervals. On the roofs were knots of people flas.h.i.+ng white signals of G.o.dspeed; when the wind was right, one could catch, very faintly, the sound of their cheering.

The flotilla drew around the curving water-front and toward the Gate. To the left, the remains of the camp dotted the plain below the Presidio hills; every last man of them was on the bulkhead in front of the fort, waving his brown hat and cheering the lucky devils who went first. The great hill guns bellowed good-bye as the transports slipped through the gleaming strait. Gradually the convoy wheeled 'round again, the bigger vessels keeping up until outside the Heads. Then the first expedition went on alone.

Tom Ashley, Senior and 'Varsity fullback, with his eyes wet in spite of himself, set his face to the west. The round sun hung red above the horizon; a few seconds earlier, it had looked over the Palo Alto hills at the deserted University campus. Beyond the s.h.i.+p, a path of gold lay out toward Manila and its future. Marion, leaning beside him, looked back at the fading line of surf below the Cliff House.

"Well, Tom," he said, a bit huskily, "Commencement Day's over."

"Yes," answered the Sergeant, without turning, "we're up against it, all right!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: On May 25, 1898, Commencement Day at the University, the First California Volunteers sailed for the Philippine Islands. With Company K of that regiment went thirty-five Stanford students, a part of the hundred who volunteered, in various regiments, for the Spanish War.]