Devil lounged in the Navy kitchen door, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood. Allen and Red set the buckets by the door.
As they started their walk Tim studied the guards. Except for the tall young private, they certainly were a sorry lot.
Mills and Dawson stood with a knot of men watching a game of dice the prisoners had started near the cookhouse wall.
It seemed to Tim that familiar things weren’t familiar any more. The barred windows in the jailhouse wall, the lamp, the sentries with their guns and glistening bayonets, the color of the earth, the skeletal branches of the spindly trees that rose above the cookhouse roof, seemed like things in a distant dream.
At last Devil stopped them with a wave of the hand. “Stop your walking now,” he said, “and watch the game.”
One of the players took out his watch, looked at it and put it away again. He spat on the dice and threw them once more, then gathered them up. “Well, that’s it,” he said in mock disgust.
Red lowered himself to the doorsill and swung into the Navy kitchen. Allen handed the buckets to Devil, who handed them to Bell with a bow and flourish.
A guard shouted, “Break up that game.”
Allen started a good-natured scuffle with Frazer, who was stupidly facing the kitchen door.
Tim dropped behind the screen of men and scrambled into the kitchen, cracking his shin against the sill.