MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

And behold it was now the year 1919 and the war was over and the cablegram fromBordeaux, which read: "Sailing 13th Santa Angela 12 day boat New York," was a weekold.Of course I met him. I left a director's meeting and vital engagements, with indecentfirmness, to meet that ship. At crack of dawn on a raw morning in March I arose anddrove miles to a freezing pier to meet it. And presently, as I stood muffled in a fur coat,an elderly, grizzled, small man, grim and unexhilarating—presently the soul of thismonotonous person broke into song. For out of the early morning, out from behind a biganchored vessel near the pier, poked the nose of a troop ship and lumbered forward, andher decks were brown with three thousand soldiers—Americans of our victorious armycoming home from overseas.It was a sight which none of us will ever see again. Out in the harbor tugs were yelping,whistles blowing; the little fleet which had gone down the bay to meet the incomingtroops was screaming itself mad in a last chorus of joyful welcome. And the good shipSanta Angela, blessed old tub, rolled nearer till the lads on her, shouting, waving,laughing, crying lads could be seen separately, and she had rounded the corner into theslip and was mere yards from the dock.And then the boy came down the gangplank and I greeted him as is my ungracious way,as if he had been off on a sailing trip. But he knew, and he held to me, the tall fellow,