Eighteen thick-
necked negroes in undershirts and trousers gazed up white-eyed
from a suspended card game at the long camp table. But we had no
time for explanations.
"Name?" I shouted at the coal-hued Hercules nearest at hand.
"David Providence," he bleated in trembling voice, and the great
Zone questionnaire was on.
We had enrolled the group before a son of wisdom among them
surmised that we were not, after all, plain-clothes men in quest
of criminals; and his announcement brought visible relief. Twice
as many blacks were sprawled in the two rows of double-sided,
three-story bunks,--mere strips of canvas on gas-pipes that could
be hung up like swinging shelves when not in use. Mere noise did
not even disturb their dreams. We roused them by pencil-jabs in
the ribs, and they started up with savage, animal-like grunts and
murderous glares which instantly subsided to sheepish grins and
voiceless astonishment at sight of a white face bending over them.
Now and again open-mouthed guffaws of laughter greeted the mumbled
admission of some powerful buck that he could not read, or did not
know his age. But there was nothing even faintly resembling
insolence, for these were all British West Indians without a
corrupting "States nigger" among them. A half-hour after our
arrival we had tagged the barracks and dived into the next camp,
blacker and sleepier and more populous than the first.
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