Trooper Tales — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

128 Shadow and the Cherub. factories. Another tier of horses, and then one sees the daylight and feels the ocean breeze. Ten hours in the black hole would kill horses and some people of olden times, but it only gives headaches — to American cavalrymen. It was sad, though, to watch the men trying to put nerve and strength in the horses they loved—the drooping, dying troop-horses. It was very sad to see the animals hang their heads out into the draughtless passageway, and distend wider their crimson nostrils. Their eyes were filmy and opaque—very un- natural and pitiful, and their lower lips hung low and quivered on the fourth day out. Then the hoisting-gear became very busy, and men grew sick when they heard the rattle of loosening chains and so many loud splashes from the sea below. Five days out, and there was more room in the stables for the suffocating troop horses still on their feet. Their limbs were swollen now and stiff. The air in the stables was deathly and heavy. “Another horse down!” cries the stable guard, and the hoisting-gear. creaks again. A strange, ugly mood possessed Cherub, the blood- hound, these days. He refused food, and was often heard - growling ominously from dark places. He occasionally walked the upper deck, but was a friend to no one except Shadow. Long after taps, when all save ship lights were out, and the cavalrymen swung and sweltered in their hammocks, Cherub was heard growling and skulking about in the darkness. And his eyes shone with a baleful EOmMmIicdbooks:co