Little Spenski's voice now drawled from behind.
“We're getting low, anyway. It was right for him to fill the bags this morning, though very kind of you to offer—”
“I don't like that, Spenski,” said Boylan. “Bull cheek for four was my order. Why, you fellows—”
Boylan was going to say how consistently generous with rations and private provisions the two Warsaw men had been, but got tangled in the language. Peter helped him. Boylan wouldn't have it otherwise, and quartered the steak, serving Spenski and covering the fourth with a tin. It was an excellent feast. For five days these two pair had cautiously, timidly even, stood for each other in that reserved way that much-weathered men integrate a memorable friendship.... Samarc returned. They helped him cache his provisions and drew him into the quadrangle around the fire. There was time for an extra pot of tea, and the dawn rose superbly. That day in the column Spenski was called into the personal escort of Kohlvihr, Boylan accompanying. Samarc and Peter rode as usual with the forward infantry—just behind the van, headquarters back a quarter of a mile.
“Tell me about Spenski,” Peter asked. “He's an interesting chap. I heard him talking to you about the stars last evening, before supper, pointing out Venus and Jupiter.”
“He'll grow on you,” said Samarc, their talk in French. “He did in my case. We've been together six years in and out of the big instrument shop in Warsaw—Bloom's. We make a camera, microscopes and even a telescope now and then. I invented a rather profitable objective for the Blooms, for which they gave me a position, and a small interest that has kept me from wandering far from Warsaw. In the first days they told me about Spenski—his remarkable workmanship—and pointed out the wiry, red-headed little chap with the quick imperative smile you've seen. We got on well together from the first. It has been no small thing for me that he likes my ways. I got him in this service, by the way, and I don't know whether I'm very proud of that. He's a lot more famous as a workman now than six years ago.”
“What is his work?” Peter asked.
“A lens-maker. His art is one of the finest of the human eye—requires genius to begin with. Spenski's craft on a glass in many cases doubles the price of the instrument. No one knows better what kind of a workman he is, nor can follow his particular finish with a keener or more appreciative eye, than old Dr. Abbe himself. Spenski has letters from that old master.
“He knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things—like the star stuff. He'll name for you scores of the vague, indefinite ones, not to speak of the larger magnitudes, which he can call by color at any hour of the night. It was this passion of his for the stars which showed him his work as a boy. That started him fabricating glasses to see them better. He has a supreme eye for light, circles and foci, and a brain that just plays with heavy mathematics—the most abstruse calculations. Yet, you see, he carries it all with the ease of a boy. I think men who come with a task to do are like that. It's part of them. They don't feel the weight of what they know, because it's all through them—not localized. You might be with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than just a mechanic—if you were just a mechanic.”
“It's very interesting,” said Peter, as charmed with his companion as with the man he talked about.