"Tyranny is a business," he repeated; "also it is a state of mind—a delusion, a ruling passion—strong even in death.... The odd part of it is that a tyrant never knows he's one.... He invariably mistakes himself for a local Moses. I can tell you a sort of story if you care to listen.... Or, we can go to some cheerful show or roof-garden——"
"Go on with your story," said Gray.
CHAPTER XII
FIFTY-FIFTY
Vail began:
Tyranny was purely a matter of business with this little moral shrimp about whom I'm going to tell you. I was standing between a communication trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed and clambered over the débris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.
The din of the guns was terrific; overhead our own shells passed with a deafening, clattering roar; the Huns continued to shell the town in front of us where our first and second[pg 136] lines were still fighting in the streets and houses while the third line were reconstructing a few yards of trenches and a few craters won.
Stretchers and bearers from my section had not yet returned from the emergency dressing station; the crater was now cleared up except of enemy dead, whose partly buried arms and legs still stuck out here and there. A company of the Third Foreign Legion had just come into the crater and had taken station at the loopholes under the parapet of sandbags.
As soon as the telephone wires were stretched as far as our crater a message came for me to remain where I was until further orders. I had just received this message and was walking along, slowly, behind the rank of soldiers, who stood leaning against the parapet with their rifles thrust through the loops, when somebody said in English—in East Side New York English I mean—"Ah, there, Doc!"
A soldier had turned toward me, both hands still grasping his resting rifle. In the "horizon blue" uniform and ugly, iron, shrapnel-proof[pg 137] helmet strapped to his bullet head I failed to recognize him.