“What contest?”

“When Jean Marie meets Johann Maria—­apres la guerre,” said Palandeau with a twinkle in his eye.

In the deck chair next to mine sat a dark, powerfully built young Iowan with the intensely masculine head of a mediaeval soldier.  There was a bit of curl to the dark-brown hair which swept his broad, low forehead, his brown eyes were devoid of fear or imagination, his jaw was set, and the big, aggressive head rested on a short, muscular neck.  He had been a salesman of machine tools till the “selling end” came to a standstill.

“But didn’t the munitions traffic boom the machine-tool industry?” I asked.

“Sure it did.  You ought to have seen what people will do to get a lathe.  You know about all that you need to make shells is a machine lathe.  You can’t get a lathe in America for love or money—­for anything”—­he made a swift, complete gesture—­“all making shells.  There isn’t a junk factory in America that hasn’t been pawed over by guys looking for lathes—­and my God! what prices!  Knew a bird named Taylor who used to make water pipes in Utica, New York—­had a stinking little lathe he paid two hundred dollars for, and sold it last year for two thousand.  My firm had so many orders for months ahead that it didn’t pay them to have salesmen—­so they offered us jobs inside; but, God, I can’t stand indoor work, so I thought I’d come over here and get into the war.  I used to be in the State Cavalry.  You ought to have seen how sore all those Iowa Germans were on me for going,” he laughed.  “Had a hell of row with a guy named Schultz.”

Limping slightly, an enormous, grizzled man approached us and sat down by the side of the ex-machinist.  Possibly a yellow-gray suit, cut in the bathrobe American style, made him look larger than he was, and though heavily built and stout, there was something about him which suggested ill health.  One might have thought him a prosperous American business man on his way to Baden-Baden.  He had a big nose, big mouth, a hard eye, and big, freckled hands which he nervously opened and closed.

“See that feller over there?” He pointed to a spectacled individual who seemed lost in melancholy speculation at the rail—­“Says he’s a Belgian lieutenant.  Been over here trying to get cloth.  Says he can’t get it, the firms over here haven’t got the colors.  Just think of it, there isn’t a pound of Bernheim’s blue in the whole country!”

“I thought we were beginning to make dyes of our own,” said the Iowan.

“Oh, yes, but we haven’t got the hang of it yet.  The product is pretty poor.  Most of the people who need dyes are afraid to use the American colors, but they’ve got to take what they can get.  Friend of mine, Lon Seeger, of Seeger, Seeger & Hall, the carpet people in Hackensack, had twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of mats spoiled on him last week by using home dyes.”

The Belgian lieutenant, still standing by the rail, was talking with another passenger, and some fragments of the conversation drifted to our ears.  I caught the words—­“My sister—­quite unexpected—­barely escaped—­no doubt of it—­I myself saw near Malines—­perfectly dreadful—­tout-a-fait terrible.”