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CHAPTER IV

HOMEWARD BOUND

On that long journey back to Kentucky it was well for Hero that he wore the Red Cross on his collar.  The little symbol was the open sesame to many a privilege that ordinary dogs are not allowed on shipboard.  Instead of being confined to the hold, he was given the liberty of the ship, and when his story was known he received as much flattering attention as if he had been some titled nobleman.

The captain shook the big white paw, gravely put into his hand at the Little Colonel’s bidding, and then stooped to stroke the dog’s head.  As he looked into the wistful, intelligent eyes his own grew tender.

“I have a son in the service,” he said, “sent back from South Africa, covered with scars.  I know what that Red Cross meant to him for a good many long weeks.  Go where you like, old fellow!  The ship is yours, so long as you make no trouble.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried the Little Colonel, looking up at the big British captain with a beaming face.  “I’d rathah be tied up myself than to have Hero kept down there in the hold.  I’m suah he’ll not bothah anybody.”

Nor did he.  No one from stoker to deck steward could make the slightest complaint against him, so dignified and well behaved was he.  Lloyd was proud of him and his devotion.  Wherever she went he followed her, lying at her feet when she sat in her steamer-chair, walking close beside her when she promenaded the deck.

Everybody stopped to speak to him, and to question Lloyd about him, so that it was not many days before she and the great St. Bernard had made friends of all the passengers who were able to be on deck.

The hours are long at sea, and people gladly welcome anything that provides entertainment, so Lloyd was often called aside as she walked, and invited to join some group, and tell to a knot of interested listeners all she knew of Hero and the Major, and the training of the ambulance dogs.

In return Lloyd’s stories nearly always called forth some anecdote from her listeners about the Red Cross work in America, and to her great surprise she found five persons among them who had met Clara Barton in some great national calamity of fire, flood, or pestilence.

One was a portly man with a gruff voice, who had passed through the experiences of the forest fires that swept through Michigan, over twenty years ago.  As he told his story, he made the scenes so real that Lloyd forgot where she was.  She could almost smell the thick, stifling smoke of the burning forest, hear the terrible crackling of the flames, feel the scorching heat in her face, and see the frightened cattle driven into the lakes and streams by the pursuing fire.