The train started moving again slowly. On the platform stood the top sergeant.
“How d'ye sleep,” he shouted as the car passed him. “Say, Fuselli, better start some grub going.”
“All right, Sarge,” said Fuselli.
The sergeant ran back to the front of the car and climbed on. With a delicious feeling of leadership, Fuselli divided up the bread and the cans of bully beef and the cheese. Then he sat on his pack eating dry bread and unsavoury beef, whistling joyfully, while the train rumbled and clattered along through a strange, misty-green countryside,—whistling joyfully because he was going to the front, where there would be glory and excitement, whistling joyfully because he felt he was getting along in the world.
It was noon. A pallid little sun like a toy balloon hung low in the reddish-grey sky. The train had stopped on a siding in the middle of a russet plain. Yellow poplars, faint as mist, rose slender against the sky along a black shining stream that swirled beside the track. In the distance a steeple and a few red roofs were etched faintly in the greyness.
The men stood about balancing first on one foot and then on the other, stamping to get warm. On the other side of the river an old man with an oxcart had stopped and was looking sadly at the train.
“Say, where's the front?” somebody shouted to him.
Everybody took up the cry; “Say, where's the front?”
The old man waved his hand, shook his head and shouted to the oxen. The oxen took up again their quiet processional gait and the old man walked ahead of them, his eyes on the ground.
“Say, ain't the frogs dumb?”