One thing particularly conspicuous in this crowd was the shortness of stature.  I, who am but of medium height, looked over the heads of nine out of ten.  The natives were all short, as were the foreign sailors.  There were only five or six in the crowd who could be called fairly tall, and they were Scandinavians and Americans.  The tallest man there, however, was an exception.  He was an Englishman, though not a Londoner.  “Candidate for the Life Guards,” I remarked to him.  “You’ve hit it, mate,” was his reply; “I’ve served my bit in that same, and the way things are I’ll be back at it before long.”

For an hour we stood quietly in this packed courtyard.  Then the men began to grow restless.  There was pushing and shoving forward, and a mild hubbub of voices.  Nothing rough, however, nor violent; merely the restlessness of weary and hungry men.  At this juncture forth came the adjutant.  I did not like him.  His eyes were not good.  There was nothing of the lowly Galilean about him, but a great deal of the centurion who said:  “For I am a man in authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.”

Well, he looked at us in just that way, and those nearest to him quailed.  Then he lifted his voice.

“Stop this ‘ere, now, or I’ll turn you the other wy an’ march you out, an’ you’ll get no breakfast.”

I cannot convey by printed speech the insufferable way in which he said this.  He seemed to me to revel in that he was a man in authority, able to say to half a thousand ragged wretches, “you may eat or go hungry, as I elect.”

To deny us our breakfast after standing for hours!  It was an awful threat, and the pitiful, abject silence which instantly fell attested its awfulness.  And it was a cowardly threat.  We could not strike back, for we were starving; and it is the way of the world that when one man feeds another he is that man’s master.  But the centurion—­I mean the adjutant—­was not satisfied.  In the dead silence he raised his voice again, and repeated the threat, and amplified it.

At last we were permitted to enter the feasting hall, where we found the “ticket men” washed but unfed.  All told, there must have been nearly seven hundred of us who sat down—­not to meat or bread, but to speech, song, and prayer.  From all of which I am convinced that Tantalus suffers in many guises this side of the infernal regions.  The adjutant made the prayer, but I did not take note of it, being too engrossed with the massed picture of misery before me.  But the speech ran something like this:  “You will feast in Paradise.  No matter how you starve and suffer here, you will feast in Paradise, that is, if you will follow the directions.”  And so forth and so forth.  A clever bit of propaganda, I took it, but rendered of no avail for two reasons.  First, the men who