So it came that I struggled to my crutches and broke rudely in on Perry Thomas’s peroration.  I had gathered all my strength for a protest against the future.  The people of the valley were to know that their kindness had cheered me, but of their pity I wanted none.  I had played a small part in a great game and in the playing was the reward.  I had come forth a bit bruised and battered, but there were other battles to be fought in this world, where one could have the same fierce joy of the conflict; and he was a poor soldier who lived only to be toted out on Decoration days.  I was glad to be home, but gladder still that I had gone.  That was what I told them.  I looked right at the girl when I said it, and she lifted her head and smiled.  They heard how in the early spring in the meadow by the mill-dam Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost.  He had to stay at home, while I went out and saw the world at its best, when it was awake to war and strife, and the mask that hid its emotion was lifted.  They heard a very simple story and a very short one, for now that I came to recount it all my great adventure dwindled to a few dreary facts.  But as best I knew I told them of the routine of the camp and of the endless drills in the long spring days down there at Tampa before the army took to sea.  I spoke of the sea and the strange things we saw there as we steamed along—­of the sharks that lolled in our wake, of the great turtles that seemed to sun themselves on the wave-crests, of the pelicans and the schools of flying fishes.  Elmer Spiker interrupted to inquire whether the turtles I had seen were “black-legs, red-legs, or yaller-legs.”  I had not the remotest idea, and said that I could not see how the question was relevant.  He replied that it was not, except that it would be of interest to some of those present to learn that there were three distinct kinds of “tortles”—­red-legs, black-legs, and “yaller-legs.”  They were shipped to the city and all became “tarripine.”  This annoyed me.  Elmer is a great scholar, and it was evident that he was simply airing his wisdom, and rather than give him a second opportunity I tried to hurry to land; but Isaac Bolum awoke and wanted to know if he had been dreaming.

“I thot I heard some one speakin’ of flyin’ fishes,” he said.

[Illustration:  Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost.]

It was reckless in me to mention these sea wonders, for now in defence of my reputation for truthfulness, I had to prove their existence.  The fabric of my story seemed to hang on them.  Elmer Spiker declared that he had heard his grandfather tell of a flying sucker that inhabited the deep hole below the bridge when he was a boy, but this was the same grandfather who had strung six squirrels and a pigeon on one bullet in the woods above the mill in his early manhood.  There Elmer winked.  Isaac Bolum allowed that they might be trout that had trained