“What's the matter, Chris?” he asked in a low voice.
“Tol' that bastard Ah didn't give a hoot in hell what he did,” said Chrisfield in a broken voice.
“Say, Andy, I don't think I ought ter let anybody talk to him,” said Small in an apologetic tone. “I don't see why Sarge always gives me all his dirty work.”
Andrews walked off without replying.
“Never mind, Chris; they won't do nothin' to ye,” said Jenkins, grinning at him good-naturedly from the door.
“Ah doan give a hoot in hell what they do,” said Chrisfield again.
He lay back in his bunk and looked at the ceiling. The barracks was full of a bustle of cleaning up. Judkins was sweeping the floor with a broom made of dry sticks. Another man was knocking down the swallows' nests with a bayonet. The mud nests crumbled and fell on the floor and the bunks, filling the air with a flutter of feathers and a smell of birdlime. The little naked bodies, with their orange bills too big for them, gave a soft plump when they hit the boards of the floor, where they lay giving faint gasping squeaks. Meanwhile, with shrill little cries, the big swallows flew back and forth in the shanty, now and then striking the low roof.
“Say, pick 'em up, can't yer?” said Small. Judkins was sweeping the little gasping bodies out among the dust and dirt.
A stoutish man stooped and picked the little birds up one by one, puckering his lips into an expression of tenderness. He made his two hands into a nest-shaped hollow, out of which stretched the long necks and the gaping orange mouths. Andrews ran into him at the door.
“Hello, Dad,” he said. “What the hell?”