"Now that's the limit. I send down an officer for trench feet? Read, Tarkington, read, and do you imagine I am going to transform 3.5 into 3.6 to please you? Look up, my friend, General Routine Orders No. 324—'Trench Feet result from a contraction of the superficial arteries with the consequence that the skin no longer being nourished dies and mortifies.' Therefore, all you have to do is to watch your arteries. Tarkington, I am extremely sorry, old man, but that is all I can do for you."
"Just my luck," said the old man to his friend the sergeant-major. "I have thirty-seven years' service; I have never been ill; and when, for the first time in my life, I ask for sick leave, it happens on the very same day that headquarters have strafed the colonel over that very subject."
His feet became red, then blue, and had begun to turn black when the colonel went away on leave. The command in his absence was taken over by Major Parker, who, being the second son of a peer, paid small attention to remarks from the brigade. He saw the distress of the unfortunate Tarkington, and sent him to the field hospital, where they decided to send him to England. It seemed that Tarkington was not the kind to be acclimatized in the Flemish marshes.
He was taken to B—— and put on board the hospital ship Saxonia, with the wounded, doctors and nurses. The port officials had ascertained to their annoyance the day before that a number of floating mines were in the Channel.
The authorities argued over the origin of these mines, which the N.T.O. said were those of the Allies, while the M.L.O. thought they were the enemy's. But there was no argument about one detail: every boat that had come into contact with one had been cut in two and sunk immediately.
The captain of the Saxonia was convinced that the Channel was free from mines. He risked it—and was blown up.
So Tarkington jumped into the sea. As a good soldier, his instinct was to devote his last minutes to keeping calm, and he swam about quietly with the gas mask that he had been advised never to lose hanging round his neck.
A salvage boat picked him up, unconscious, and he was taken to a hospital on the English coast. He recovered consciousness, but felt very ill from his immersion in the water.
"Just like my cursed luck!" he groaned. "They stop me starting for a month, and when at last I do get off, it is in the only ship that has gone down for a year."
"They are all alike," said the colonel, on his return from leave. "Here's a blighter who grumbles at having his feet in water, and then takes advantage of my absence to go and have a salt-water bath!"