The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport

by Ida M. Tarbell

“It’s melodrama,” said Dick.

“It will do the work,” said the General.

But that was to be done.

The execution of the plan, which the General and Dick had agreed upon for the siege and capture of Sabinsport’s heart, was not easy, in the pressure and anxiety which the epidemic in the camp had brought, and its probable effect seemed to both men more and more doubtful as the friction between the town and camp grew.

It was on Christmas night that it was to be carried out. The Sunday night before Dick came home, white with weariness and despondency. He had had a day too hard for him, that he knew; one which his physician would have called dangerous. But how could it be helped? At daybreak a doctor at the camp had telephoned that Peter Tompkins couldn’t live, that he had asked for the “minister.” Would he go down? “Be there in an hour,” Dick had answered—and he was. The poor lad was almost gone. Dick sat with him to the end, took his last message—winced, wondered, and bowed his head at the sheer, cheerful bravery with which the boy took what he called faintly his “medicine.” “Didn’t take care like they told me,” he said. “Tell Mother they’ve done the best they could.” But Dick knew that while the loyal fellow might take upon himself the cause of his own death, blundering orders and unthinking friends were responsible. The boys had been told to bring as little as possible to camp—only a suit case which could be sent back with the clothes they wore. Peter, like hundreds of others in that cruel month of December had started from his home in his oldest, thinnest clothes, without an overcoat. He was going to throw everything away, he said, and not trouble to send anything back; and there had been nobody in the town with sufficient forethought and authority to prevent the risk he took. He had reached camp chilled to the bone. The supply of clothing was short. He had to go about for days in his thin, old garments. He could not get warm, exercise as he would, hug the fire as he would.

In the tremendous pressure of preparation and organization, it was impossible that the physical condition of each boy should be known to his officers. Peter had to shift for himself in those first days. He was shy and homesick. It was Dick, who was making a specialty of the homesick, who had discovered how serious his condition was and who had seen to it that he was sent to the hospital; and it was Dick who had given him the care which the one doctor and one nurse in a ward where there were two hundred very sick boys could not possibly give.

It was too late. Peter was dead, and, two hours before, Dick had seen his rough pine coffin on the platform, ready for the journey home. A clumsy wreath had been laid upon it by some sorrowing “buddy,” at its foot stood a cheap suitcase, containing all the boy’s few belongings. At the head a soldier kept guard. Dick’s heart ached for the mother who must receive the pitiful box. And he groaned as he thought of the many, very many, he feared, that would follow it.

Sabinsport’s temper at the moment weighed even more heavily upon Dick that night than the sickness at the camp. The inevitable scandal, that both he and the General had feared, had come the night before. Twenty boys, off for their Saturday holiday, had slipped into Sabinsport for what they called a “blow out.” They had gone to Beefsteak John’s, one of the cheap workmen’s hotels, had taken rooms, laid off their uniforms, put on pajamas and called up the barkeeper. Of course he could give them what they wanted, for they were not in uniform! And he had done it.

The scandal had been made worse by the introduction of a half dozen of the strange women who had taken up their dwelling in Sabinsport. Before morning the crowd was on the streets, rioting madly. The boys had been arrested and were in jail. The whole story was in the City’s Sunday morning paper. Sabinsport was disgraced before the world.

The General and Dick had talked the matter over in the hour after he had closed poor Peter’s eyes, and both had agreed that this probably put an end to their Christmas celebration. “You can see,” the General had said, “how impossible it will be for me to do my part unless I know that every saloon in Sabinsport is absolutely closed. That’s my ultimatum. They tell me that there’s a man by the name of Mulligan that controls the town. Could you get at him?”