"No, Hebe," I said, "you don't get the things; and when you do get them, this crowd steals them on you."
"By God," said Hebe, "that's got to be put a stop to. I'll report the next man I find stealing anything from the cookhouse."
I put my hand cautiously behind my back, until I felt my fingers close on the tin of milk. "You let me know, Hebe," I said, as I slipped the tin into the roomy pocket of my riding breeches, "and I'll make out a crime sheet against the first man whose name you give." I stayed about ten minutes longer talking to Hebe, and then returned to my dugout. Art had finished broiling the piece of steak, and we began our supper. I put my hand in my breeches' pocket to get the milk. Instead of grasping the tin, my fingers closed on a sticky, gluey mass. The tin had been opened when I took it and I had it in my pocket upside down. About half of it had oozed over my pocket. Art was just pouring the remainder on some bread when some one lifted the rubber sheet and stuck his head into our dugout. It was the enraged Hebe Wheeler. As soon as he had missed his precious milk he had made a thorough investigation of all the dugouts. He looked at Art accusingly.
"Come in, Hebe," I said pleasantly. "We don't see you very often."
Hebe paid no attention to my invitation, but glared at Art.
"I've caught you with the goods on," he said. "Give me back that milk, or I'll report you to the platoon officer."
"You can report me to Lord Kitchener if you like," said Art, calmly, as he drained the can; "but this milk stays right here."
Hebe disappeared, breathing vengeance.
After supper that night a crowd sat around the dying embers of one of the fires. This was one of the first positions we had been in where there was cover sufficient to warrant fires being lighted. A mail had been distributed that day, and the men exchanged items of news and swapped gossip. There were men there from all parts of Newfoundland. They spoke in at least thirty different accents. Any one who made a study of it could tell easily from each man's accent the district he came from. Much of the mail was intimate, and necessitated private perusal, but much more was of interest to others. It was interesting to hear a man yell to a friend who came from his same "bay" that another man had enlisted from Robinson's, making up eighteen of the nineteen men of fighting age in the place. Sometimes the news was that "Half has volunteered, and Hed was turned down by the doctor."
This from some resident of the northern parts where the fog is not, and where aspirates are of little consequence. This news gives rise to the opinion that "that's the hend o' Half." This with much discussion and ominous shaking of the head. Sometimes a friend of the absent "Half" would tell of Half's exploit of stealing a trolley from the Reid Newfoundland Railway Company and going twenty miles to see a girl. Sometimes the hero was a married man. Then it was opined that his conjugal relations were not happy, and the reason he enlisted was that "he had heard something." All these opinions and suggestions were voiced with that beautiful freedom from restraint so characteristic of the ordinary conversation of the members of our regiment. Much was made of the arrival of a mail. It did not happen often, and the letters that came were three or four months old. "As cold waters to a thirsty soul," says Solomon, "so is good news from a far country." The Newfoundlanders in that barren, scorched country caught eagerly at every shred of news from that distant Northern country that they loved enough to risk their lives for. With such a setting it is little wonder that the talk was much of home. Behind the persiflage of the talk there was a poignant longing for those dark, cool forests of pine where the caribou roam, and the broad-bosomed lakes and rivers that were the highways for the monsters of the Northern forests on their journey to the mills. The lumbermen of Notre Dame Bay and Green Bay told fearsome and wondrous tales of driving and swamping, of teaming and landing, until one almost heard the blows of the ax, the "gee" and "haw" of the teamsters, and smelt the pungent odor of new-cut pine. The Reid Newfoundland Railway, the single narrow gage road that twists a picturesque trail across the Island, had given largely of its personnel toward the making of the regiment. Firemen and engineers, brakemen and conductors, talked reminiscently of forced runs to catch expresses with freight and accommodation trains. There is an interesting tale of two drivers who blew their whistles in the Morse code, and kept up communication with each other, until a girl learned the code and broke up the friendship. A steamship fireman contributed his quota with a story of laboring through mountainous seas against furious tides when the stokers' utmost efforts served only to keep steamers from losing way. By comparison with the homeland, Turkey suffered much; and the things they said about Gallipoli were lamentable. From the gloom on the other side of the fire a voice chanted softly, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go." Gradually all joined in. After Tipperary, came many marching songs. "Are we downhearted? NO," with every one booming out the "No." "Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue," and at last their own song; to the tune of "There is a tavern in the town."