How far the British contingent followed the intricacies of the combat it is difficult to say. When Al Thompson pointed out a sturdy but medium-sized player, and announced that he had once been a Giant, Andrew Drummond merely wondered vaguely why he had shrunk. When another player was uproariously identified as a late Captain of the Red Socks, the English spectators mentally registered the Red Socks as some obsolescent Indian tribe—like the Blackfeet.
But you cannot, as has been well said during this War, remain neutral on a moral issue. Within twenty minutes every one on the ground was shouting “Attaboy!” or consigning the umpire to perdition, or endeavouring to imitate the concerted war-songs of the rival sides. When the sailors won the game by a narrow margin every soldier present, American or British, lamented to heaven.
“This is the End of a Perfect Day, I guess,” remarked that most satisfactory guest, Al Thompson, as the trio made their way arm in arm along the crowded Strand in the cool of the evening. “What do you say, Ed?”
The carper made no reply, but looked about him with a dissatisfied air.
“Seems to me,” he remarked querulously, “that this War ain’t such a fierce proposition as folks made out. Look at these people all enjoying themselves.”
“Well, I guess they done their day’s work,” said Gillette pacifically. “Besides, most of them are in khaki—or else that hospital uniform”—as a string of _char-à-bancs_ conveying convalescents to the theatre rattled cheerfully past.
“These here wounded don’t appear to be wounded so bad,” he grumbled. “You don’t never see no seriously wounded men in the streets of this town.”
“No,” rapped out Al Thompson, ruffled for once, “and you don’t see no dead laying around neither! I guess if you was to take a walk through a hospital, Joe McCarthy—No, you can cancel the hospital. This will do.”
They had reached Charing Cross Station. From the farther gate streamed a slow-moving procession of loaded Red Cross ambulances. Another procession, empty, was moving in at the nearer gate, to disappear inside the station. Down an adjacent street stretched a line of more ambulances, and more yet. But the busy crowd in the Strand gave little heed to the spectacle. They had witnessed it, or could have witnessed it, at this hour and in this place, among others, any evening during the past four years.