"Attention," he barked. The privates came to
attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered his
helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, he stood over the grave. The
Rostina sharpshooters fired briskly.
"Oh, Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his
spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the
drowning. Perceive, we beseech, O Father, the little flying bubble,
and--".
Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this
point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse.
The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began,
and then he too came to an end.
"And from Thy superb heights," said Lean.
The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the
Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant
manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on.
"Oh, God, have mercy--"
"Oh, God, have mercy--" said Lean.
"Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure.
"Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling,
for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the
dirt in."
The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous.
* * * * *
One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted
his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable
hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its chalk-
blue face looked keenly out from the grave.
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