Chapter 9 - Page 2

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