"Oh, you go plumb to thunder across lots with what I ought to do!" groaned Flynn. "You've told me about ten billion fool things I ought to do. There's only one thing I ought to do and that is die. If you felt like me you'd say: 'Here goes nothin',' and hit the briny kerplunk in about two seconds. Take it from me, Herb, it isn't just awful; it's worse than war. I'd rather go up to a forty-two-centimeter just as she goes off and feed me face with the shell comin' out of her than be seasick. I'd rather swallow shrapnel, time fuse and all, and have it go off and turn me inside out than have this darned old heavin' pond coax a ten-dollar dinner out o' me. Say, I feel it comin' again!"
"Forget it," said Herb. "You come on and lie down and that'll make you feel better. Try it, at any rate. Come on now, or I'll carry you down!"
Much of this sort of dialogue went on every night, Roy finding, as did a few others, that the doctor's medicine was not effective.
It was a relief to the boy, as well as to Herb who had lost sleep remaining up with him night after night, when the ship entered a narrow harbor across a wide, unruffled bay somewhere on the long coast of France and warped up to a newly-timbered and planked dock having all of the earmarks, as it were, of American construction.
Indeed, a dozen carpenters who were unmistakably Yankee in get-up and movements, and who later proved it by their speech, were still at work on the office building that flanked the wharf. These fellows came in for a guying.
The boys in khaki leaning over the side, perched on cabin roofs, lifeboats, stanchions, railings and in rigging, feeling more than gay at seeing land again and the fact of having had a safe trip against possible dangers, had to let their exuberance be felt.
"Yip, yip, yip, yip! Get the dog-catcher's net! There's a son-of-a-gun from the land of the sun; eh, Yank?" shouted Roy, leading the fun, as usual.
"Sure, those ginks are all from God's country!"
"Hey, Yank! Does your mother know you're out, over here?"
"Hush, fellers! Salute; that there boob's General Hatchet-and-Saw and yonder's Colonel Sawdust!"