The pitcher, hardly able to throw for laughing, tossed an underhand lob that went wide. Potter swung madly, staggered, and recovered. “Try it closer, closer.” He paused, stooped to pick up his stone jug, and took a swig. He saw Starbuck as he lowered the jug. “Captain Ahab, sir!”

“Are you drunk?” Starbuck said when he was close to Potter.

Potter grinned, shrugged and thought about the question, but could not come up with anything witty. “I guess,” he said.

“Button yourself, Captain.”

Potter shook his head, not in refusal, but in perplexity. “Just a bit of horseplay, Captain Ahab.”

“Button yourself,” Starbuck said quietly.

“You’re going all stern on me, ain’t you? Just like my father—” Potter stopped abruptly as Starbuck hit him in the belly. The younger man folded over, retching just as he had when Starbuck had first found him in the Hells.

“Stand up straight,” Starbuck said, kicking over the stone bottle, “and button yourself.”

“Let him play!” a voice shouted sullenly. It was Sergeant Case. “Nothing wrong with a game,” the sergeant insisted. “Let him play.” A few men muttered their support. Starbuck, they reckoned, was spoiling their day’s one small moment of enjoyment.

“Good Sergeant Case,” Potter said, cuffing spittle away from his chin. “My supplier of whiskey.” He stooped to the fallen bottle, but Starbuck kicked it away before crossing to face Case.

“You gave Potter the whiskey?”

Case hesitated, then nodded. “Ain’t against the law, Major.”

“It’s against my law,” Starbuck said, “and you knew it.”

Case rocked back and forward on his heels. He had drunk some of the whiskey himself, and maybe that gave him the courage to convert his hostility toward Starbuck into open defiance. He spat close to Starbuck’s boots. “Your law?” he jeered. “What law is that, Major?”

“The rules of this battalion, Case.”

“This battalion, Major,” Case exploded in fury, “is the sorriest damn collection of bloody bastards ever put under a flag. This ain’t a battalion, Major, it’s a rabble of skulkers who weren’t wanted in any proper regiment. This ain’t a battalion, Major! This ain’t nothing! We ain’t got nothing. No wagons, no axes, no tents, no doctor, no nothing! We weren’t sent here to fight, Major, but to get ourselves killed.”

There were louder murmurs of agreement. Men who had been resting had come to see the confrontation, so that nearly all of the battalion was now grouped around the makeshift playing diamond.

“A month ago,” Starbuck raised his voice, “I was in a battalion that got raided by Yankees. They killed half our officers, burned our wagons, destroyed all our spare ammunition, but we still fought a week later and won. This battalion can do the same.”

“The hell it can,” Case said. His fellow sergeants had come to his support, a phalanx of tough, grim-faced men who stared with blank hatred at Starbuck. “The hell it can,” Case said again. “It might be good for guarding prisoners, or fetching and carrying supplies, but it ain’t any good for fighting.”