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Then, having thus performed his duty, he mounted the box beside his friend the coachman, and the equipage rattled quickly away, its gleaming lights soon lost in the smoke-laden vapours that drooped downward like funeral hangings from the invisible sky to the scarcely visible ground.
"Murder!" I ejaculated, as I entered the pokey little place and got my first whiff of its close, reeking, smoke-laden atmosphere; "put out that abominable lamp and light a candle or two, somebody, for pity's sake. How the dickens you fellows can manage to breathe down here I can't understand.
With the bottle slung across his shoulder and a native jar holding about a gallon in each hand, Dudley leapt into the trench and scaled the parapet before the few men who were in the vicinity were aware of his intention. Then drawing a deep breath, like a diver about to make a plunge, he dashed into the belt of smoke-laden air. At every pace his boots kicked up showers of white ashes.
When the door was opened, through the smoke-laden atmosphere, dense with the accents of the North, one had a vision of a vast, low room with hams hanging from the rafters, casks of beer standing in a row, the floor ankle-deep with sawdust, and on the counter great salad-bowls filled with potatoes as red as chestnuts, and baskets of pretzels fresh from the oven, their golden knots sprinkled with white salt.
The church was not half filled; there were no people very near them, and when presently there was singing, the sweet, old-world lines beat distantly on the shores of their consciousness. They sat hand in hand, each thinking of battlefields; the one with a constant vision of Port Republic, the other of some to-morrow's vast, melancholy, smoke-laden plain.
She had an idea that the smoke-laden London air affected her lungs, and, apart from the pleasure of seeing the survivors of the very intimate circle of friends of her young days, London had few attractions for her; all her interests were centred in the country, in country people, and country things.
For ourselves we lay, our bows split with the shock, our engine-room in fearful disorder, our men drunk with ferocity and with despair. The other warships were yet some distance away; but they opened fire upon us at hazard, and, of the first three shells which fell, two cut our decks; and sent clouds of splinters, of wood, and of human flesh flying in the smoke-laden air.
In two days Rowdy was quite at home with the Cross L. In a month he found himself transplanted from the smoke-laden air of the bunk-house, and set off from the world in a line camp, with nothing to do but patrol the boggy banks of Milk River, where it was still unfenced and unclaimed by small farmers.
The master turned upon his heel, with a brief, oblique nod over his shoulder, and made his way out into the open air. Here, as he walked, he drew a succession of long consolatory breaths. It was almost as if he had emerged from the lethal presence of the fumigator itself. He took the largest cigar from his case, lighted it, and sighed smoke-laden new relief as he strolled back toward the terrace.
"Instantly there descended upon us, out of the empty air of that smoke-laden room, a force which I can only compare to the pushing, driving power of a great wind pent up within a narrow space. It was almost explosive in its effect, and it seemed to operate upon all parts of my body equally.
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