Page:From Yauco to Las Marias.djvu/48

30 were hungry, limp, and ugly. So, having crammed down a hasty supper of nothing in particular, we made short shift of absent tents, and, pulling our blankets to our chins, lay face upward to the stars that made us homesick, and slept the sleep of tired little children.

I was wakened in the middle of the night by a distant jangle of sabres and rattle of hooves. Seeing our officer of the day. Lieutenant R. E. Callan, standing not far away and looming gigantic against the sky, I asked him the meaning of the noise; and he replied that it was Captain Macomb's troop of cavalry just coming in. I lit my pipe and talked for a while with the lieutenant of other things than war — Maude Adams and John Drew, football, ambition, and books — till finally he went away to make his rounds. My pipe went out, and I dreamed of stranger happenings than my longest thoughts could fashion in the glare of day. And, when I woke again, reveille was soaring from post to post.