The only place in which he did feel at home was the sponson. The five-inch gun was the same model he'd served on the Dakota^ and the sponson itself might have been transferred bodily from the battleship. The chief gunner's mate in charge of the crew, a burly veteran named Willie Moore, wore a splendid gray Kaiser Bill mustache. He wasn't half brother to his counterpart from the Dakota^ Hiram Kidde, but Sam couldn't have proved it by the way he acted.

He turned out to know Kidde, which surprised Sam not at all. "If you served with the 'Cap'n,' reckon you'll do for me," he rumbled when Carsten mentioned the name of his former gun commander a couple of days after coming aboard.

"Thanks, Chief. Hope so," Sam said, and punctuated that with a sneeze. "Damn. I'm coming down with a cold."

He was off his feed at supper that evening, which surprised him: the Remembrance, however ugly she was, boasted a first-class galley. Everything was fresh, too-an advantage of sitting in port. But Sam didn't realize how sick he was till the next morning, when he almost fell out of his bunk. He stood, swaying, in front of it.

"You all right?" asked George Moerlein, who slept just above him. Sam didn't answer; he had trouble figuring out what the words meant. Moerlein peered at him, touched his forehead, and then jerked back his hand as if he'd tried picking up a live coal. "We better get this guy to sick bay," he said. "I think he's got the influenza." Sam didn't argue, either. He couldn't. He let them lead him away.

Arthur McGregor took a certain somber satisfaction in listening to the wind howl around his farmhouse. That was just as well; the wind in Manitoba was going to howl through the winter whether he took any satisfaction in it or not.