bothered Zack. He hungered for the "Hot Cat Eating House," and for somebody who could understand that regular old-timey Unity States talk. From the minute he stepped off that first boat at Naples, Zack couldn't make out a word of what anybody was saying. Then they crossed Italy, and caught another boat. The Colonel said they were going to Greece, but Zack never saw any grease, just a lot of dry yellow hills, and no grass, where folks jabbered a whole lot worse than the Italians. That's where they took a third boat for Afriky Landing.
So here Zack was, on a Russian vessel, crowded with all kinds of people wearing their Mardi Gras clothes, Greeks, Slavs, Polacks, Turks, Russians, Huns, Gippies—squatting around the lower decks and jabbering to beat the band. But, some way or other, Zack couldn't get in on the jabber. He stood amongst them, tongue-tied and dumb; he, the Champeen Argufier of the Hot Cat Eating House, was staked out in the fields of silence, and fenced off from his kind. This gibble-gabble on the upper deck, and the gibberish amidships, made Zack's feet itch to get away. A lonesome black-faced figure, in store -bought clothes, and hat of wide-brimmed gray, he wandered from one chattering group to another, smiling in a neighborly fashion, but silent. Back, and back again he returned to the Colonel's chair.
