I wound up by telling him he was an autocrat; which disturbed his graven serenity. Autocrat and autocracy were not pleasant-sounding words just then. He snapped his head up, and for the first time looked as if he might be human.

"We have to be autocratic in war time," he barked.

"Not in everything," I barked back.

Then, and not till then, did he soften. We had a little more conversation, and then he said he wanted that night to think over the unprecedented request. He would let me know next day.

A perfect bigot; and yet there were worse than he. He dared to say what he thought about the rights of his station. Some of his judgments may have been childish, but his convictions were deep and honest. I respected him, and later came to have almost a liking for him.

I have expended many paragraphs in telling of this interview, but it is meant to be more than a statement of one American correspondent. It is meant to explain a point of view which Americans may find it hard work to understand. That admiral in charge of our naval base can be multiplied all the world over. We have them in our own departments.

While waiting the admiral's pleasure I had a look at the port. A fine harbor, a beautiful harbor, but disfigured now by big, ugly war-buildings. The houses of the port set mostly up on terraces. There were several streets, but only one real one in the place, and that ran along the waterside. All the pubs of the port were naturally located on this waterside street, and so no tired seafarer had to walk far to get a drink. Not many of our fellows were to be seen on the streets in daylight; but at night they were plentiful. A couple of movie theatres took care of about three hundred of them; the rest walked the waterside street. There was a port order there that no sailor of ours could stay in a pub after eight in the evening, so at one minute past eight that waterside street looked like a naval parade. For the rest the port offered little or nothing to tempt a man. It was as rainy a place as ever I was in, and the back streets were crowded with children playing. Barefooted, healthy children! If they had not been healthy the weather would surely have killed them off. It was a most moral port, too; too moral for some people, who thought to put a little life into the place by making nightly calls there, and made the nightly calls till a local clergyman protested from the altar, whereupon some muscular young Christians ran the visitors back aboard their train and out of the port's history.

Next day the admiral gave me permission to make a cruise with our destroyers. He seemed to be giving it in the same stubborn fashion that he had at first refused it—as though he saw his duty in so doing. I was told that he said he did not think much of my manners; which, of course, worried me.

I knew quite a few officers in the navy who were commanding destroyers over there. Any one of them, known or unknown to me, was good enough for me as a skipper. No man not ready to take a chance puts in for command of a destroyer over there; and no man not fit is given a command. But I took passage with one that I had cruised with before—the alert, resourceful kind with plenty of nerve. If anything should happen, I knew he would be there with all his crew and his ship had.

What happened while with him and at the naval base I have tried to tell as separate incidents when I can, in the chapters which follow.



ONE THEY DIDN'T GET

We were one of a group of American destroyers convoying a fleet of inbound British merchant steamers.

The messenger handed a radio in to the bridge.

"We are being shelled," said the radio; latitude and longitude followed, as did the name of the ship, J. L. Luckenbach. One of us knew her; an American ship of 6,000 tons or so.

Another radio came: "Shell burst in engine-room. Engineer crippled." S O S signals were no rare thing in those waters, but even so they were never passed up as lacking interest; the skipper waited for action. Pretty soon it came, a signal from the senior officer of our group. The 352—let us give that as the number of our ship—was to proceed at once to the assistance of the Luckenbach.

The skipper's first act was to shake up the second watch-officer, who also happened to be acting as chief engineer of the ship, and to pass him the word to speed the ship up to twenty-five knots. We were steaming at the head of the convoy column at eighteen knots at the time. The first watch-officer, having finished his breakfast and a morning watch, was just then taking a little nap on the port ward-room transom with his clothes and sea-boots still on. The active messenger shook him up too. The two officers made the deck together, one buttoning his blouse over a heavy sweater, the other a sheepskin coat over his blouse.

Word was sent to the Luckenbach that we were on the way. Within three minutes the radio came back: "Our steam is cut off. How soon can you get here?"

Up through the speaking-tube came a voice just then to say that we were making twenty-five knots. At the same moment our executive officer, who also happened to be the navigator, handed the skipper a slip of paper with the course and distance to the Luckenbach, saying: "That was at nine-fifteen."

It was then nine-seventeen. Down the tube to the engine-room went the order to make what speed she could. Also the skipper said: "She ought to be tearing off twenty-eight soon as she warms up. And she's how far now? Eighty-two miles? Send this radio: 'Stick to it—will be with you within three hours.'"

By this time all hands had an idea of what was doing and all began to brighten up. Men off watch, supposed to be asleep in their cots below, began to stroll up and have a look around decks. Some lingered near the wireless door, and every time the messenger passed they sort of stuck their ears up at him. He was a long-legged lad in rubber boots who took the deck in big strides. His lips never opened, but his eyes talked. The men turned from him with pleased expressions on their faces.

There was a little steel shelter built on to the chart house to port. It was for the protection of the forward gun crew, who had to be ready for action at any minute. Men standing by for action and not getting it legitimately, try to get it in some other way. So they used to burn up their spare energy in arguing. It did not matter what the argument was about—the President, Roosevelt, the Kaiser, the world series—any subject would do so long as it would grow into an argument. The rest of the crew could hear them—threatening to bust each other's eyes out—clear to the skid deck sometimes. But now all quiet here, and soon they were edging out of their igloo and calling down to the fellows on the main deck: "That right about a ship being shelled by a sub? Yes. Well!" They went down to their shelter smiling at one another.

Ship's cooks, who rarely wander far from their cosey galley stoves, began to show on deck; ward-room stewards came out on deck; a gang black-painting a tank hatch—they all slipped over to the rail and, leaning as far out as they could and not fall overboard, had long looks ahead. And then they all turned to see what 352's smoke-stacks were doing. There was great hope there.

The black smoke was getting blacker and heavier. They were sure feeding the oil to her. The chief came up the engine-room ladder. An old petty officer waylaid him. Doing well, was she, sir?—She was. Hem! About how well, sir?—Damn' well. She was kicking out twenty-eight—twenty-eight good—and picking up.

Twenty-eight and picking up? And the best she showed in her builders' trial was twenty-nine-one! What d'y' know about her? Some little old packet, hah?

It was a fine day, the one fine day of the trip, a rarely fine day for this part of the northern ocean at this time of year. It was cloudy, but it was calm. There was a long, easy swell on, but no sea to make her dive or pitch. The swell, when she got going in good shape, set her to swinging a little, but that did not hurt. A destroyer just naturally likes to swing a little.

Swinging along she went, rolling one rail down and then the other, but not making it hard to stand almost anywhere around deck, except that when you went aft there was a drive of air that lifted you maybe a little faster than you started out to go. Swinging along she went, a long, easy swing, carrying a long white swash to either side of her, vibrating a thousand to the minute on her fantail, streaming out a long white and pale-blue wake for as far as we could see, and just clear of her taffrail piling up the finest little hill of clear white boiling water.

Twenty-nine, they say, she was making, and still picking up. What! Thirty? And a little more left in her? What d'y' know—some little baby, hah?

Another radio came to the bridge: "A shell below our water-line. Settling, but still afloat and still fighting."

"Good work. Stick to it," they said on the bridge, and wondered whether it was the skipper or the radio man who was framing the messages. He had the dramatic instinct, whoever he was.

Perhaps twenty minutes later came: "Water in our engine-room."

And then: "Fire in our forehold, but will not surrender. Look for our boats."

And: "They are now shooting at our antennae."

Radios to the bridge are not posted up for the crew to gossip over, but there was no keeping that last one under cover.

"Shelling their attenay? Well, the mortifying dogs! Whatever you do, don't let 'em get your attenay, old bucket."

Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot. The canvas caps came off the guns, and the gun crews were told to load and stand by. A chief gunner's mate was told to make ready his torpedo-tubes. He was a famous torpedo-man. He would stay up all night with an ailing gyro or hydrostatic piston and not even ask to sleep in next morning for a reward, and he had a record of making nothing but hits at torpedo-practice. But he had been glum all the trip. He had stayed past the legal hour on liberty the last time in, and the shore patrol had come along and scooped him up. A court-martial was coming to him and so he had been glum; but not now. He went around decks smiling, with a little steel thing that looked like a wrist-bag but wasn't. It held the keys to the magazines.

Pretty soon he had torpedo-tubes swinging inboard and outboard, and between every pair of tubes a man sitting up in an iron seat that looked like the kind that goes with a McCormick reaper, which all helped the gunner's mate to feel better. He stopped ten seconds to tell the story of the new gun-crew man who was sent up the yard to the storekeeper for a pair of spurs to ride the torpedo-tubes with.

There were four guns, one forward, one aft, and two in the waist. They had been slushed down with vaseline to keep the salt-water rust off; now they were swabbing the grease off. Grease on the outside of a gun does not affect the shooting of the inside, but a gun ought naturally to look slick going into action.



Trainers and pointers stood beside their loaded guns, and other members of the gun crew held up shells, the noses of the shells stuck into the deck mat and the butts resting against the young chests of the gun crews as they stood in line. There was a nineteen-year-old lad who, when I knew him two years before, was doing boy's work in the Collier bookbindery. Now he was a gun-captain standing handy to his little pet and trying not to look too proud when he peeked up toward where I was.

The foretop reported smoke on the horizon ahead. That would be on the Luckenbach. And where she was the U-boat was. The forward gun was trained a point to right of the smoke.

One senior watch-officer, now in the foretop, called down that he could now see the ship. Smoke was coming out of her hull. Soon he reported shells splashing alongside of her. Those would be from the U-boat. Soon we all could see the ship from the bridge.

The foretop then reported the U-boat. She was almost dead ahead. She could not be seen from the bridge, but, directed by the foretop, the gun was trained on the horizon dead ahead; 11,000 yards was the range. The gun was one of the latest type—only a 4-inch—but a great little gun just the same.

"Train and fire," said the skipper. Bo-o-m! it went, flame and smoke. We could not see the splash from the bridge, nor could they in the foretop. It probably dropped beyond the submarine, which soon we could see—a pretty big fellow she looked with two guns. She had been shelling the ship even while we were running up, and as our first shot boomed out she let go another shell. We expected her to send a couple our way—she probably carried bigger guns than we did—but she did not; she let go another at the steamer. "Maybe at the antennae," said a chief quartermaster on the bridge.

We shortened our range. The gun was trained and ready for firing when a sea rolled up on us. The ocean was smooth enough, but the swell was still on—a long swell of the kind that does not sputter, but walk right up and announce their arrival by arriving. This long blue swell rolled up to our bow.

We were doing thirty knots and at thirty knots a little ship doesn't need a masthead sea to get action. We went into it head first. It came right on over our bow, over our foc'sle head, over the forward gun. The shield to the forward gun stood probably six feet above the foc'sle deck. That wave rolled right over the gun-shield.

There was a C. P. O. standing quite close to the shield. He grabbed a vertical rod on the outside of the shield, and just managed to hook in the fingers of one hand. The sea, all white and solid, rolled over the gun and the shield. The C. P. O. was swept off his feet, but he was a stubborn one and hung on. Behind him was the officer in charge of the firing. When he saw that sea rolling up there was nothing near but the C. P. O., so he grabbed the C. P. O. with both hands around the waist. He too was swept off his feet, but he hung on—to the C. P. O. They both floated flat out on the white roller, and the white roller went smash-o! up against the chart house.

The chart house was just under the bridge, and the glass windows had been taken out from the bridge railing so that they would not be smashed by the concussion of the forward gun. We were leaning out of these open spaces, just getting ready to laugh at the people below when, swabbo! up the side of the chart house and through the open spaces and into our open mouths came the wash of the sea.

Another wave followed that one, but not quite so high. As soon as it passed the forward gun was trained and fired. We had been making great leaps ahead all this time—the range now was under 9,000 yards. The foretop reported it short.

The U-boat was still there. We still expected her to send one our way. But nothing doing for us. She sent another shell toward the steamer. The steamer had quit firing. No use. The U-boat had simply taken position beyond range of the steamer's guns and leisurely as she pleased was shelling her. Our third shell landed close to the sub. And then down she went and wasted no time at it. Before we could train and fire again she was gone.

The sub, as we learned later, had landed fifteen shells into the steamer and wounded nine of her people, of whom three were of the bluejacket gun crew.

One young bluejacket had been hit twice. He was carrying a shell to the gun when he caught the second one—a piece of flying shell in his shoulder. He laid his own shell on the deck to see how about it, and got hit again; this time in what our navy calls the stern sheets. That made him mad. He shook his fist toward the sub. "No damn' German's going to hit me three times and get away with it." He grabbed his shell off the deck and slammed it into the gun-breech. "Hand it to 'em, Joe!" he yelled to the gun-pointer. Joe did his best, but he didn't have the gun—the shot splashed where most of them had, about half a mile short of the sub.

Still pouring the black smoke out of our funnels, we leaped toward the Luckenbach and hailed her through the megaphone when we breasted her. She hailed back that she had water in her afterhold and fire in her forehold, and gave us the number of her wounded. Two of the three wounded bluejackets were injured seriously. We could see them stretched out under the gun.

We were steaming around the Luckenbach at twenty knots while we were hailing: this in case the sub took it in her head to pop up again and catch us slowed down. We did slow down and stop when it came time to clear away a whale-boat and send it over to the steamer with our senior watch-officer and the surgeon, with the needful surgical supplies.

We continued to steam circles around the steamer all the time they were aboard, with our lookouts keeping eyes skinned for the U-boat. By her manner of shelling the steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling the Luckenbach. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again—it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not—but we only sighted it once, and then it did not linger.

The sea was growing lumpy when the whale-boat came bouncing back with our senior officer. It was right about the Luckenbach having nine injured, but all would get well. The doctor was looking after them. She was a cotton steamer. The kid who had been hit twice was all right. He was walking around deck with his cap over his port ear and proud as Billy-be-Damn'—three times wounded by German shell fire and got away with it!

The fire in the forehold? Most of it was from two old mattresses—at least that was all he found.

"Did you put the fire out?"

"Yes, sir. The steamer's crew were too tired to do any more hustling around to put any fire out, so we got out a hose and put it out."

"How about that bulkhead?" asked the skipper. "He hailed that he didn't think it would stand the strain of steaming."

"Maybe so, sir, but I don't agree with him. I don't see how that bulkhead's going to cave in with all those bales of cotton jammed up against it. What the most of them over there are suffering from is the reaction from that three hours of shelling—everything was looking pretty blue to them, sir."

"Can he make steam?"

"Yes, sir. Their engineer has two ribs busted in and a piece of shrapnel in his neck and part of his foot shot away. But he's all right. He was lying down when I first saw him, cursing the Germans blue. Then he says: 'Put me on my feet, men.' A couple of oilers put him on his feet. I thought he was going to give orders to make steam, but he only wanted to be stood up so as he could curse the Germans a little better. Lying down interfered with his wind. He rolled it out in one steady stream for ten minutes. He was an Italian, or maybe a Spaniard, and his English wasn't perfect, but he could talk like hell. He's all right. He'll get steam up, sir."

By and by they did make steam and begin to move on a course our skipper wigwagged to them. The skipper left the surgeon aboard, and at twenty knots the 352 steamed more circles around the steamer, all lookouts meanwhile skinning their eyes afresh for signs of the sub. We could make out a lot of smoke on the southern horizon. It was the convoy we had left in the morning. An hour later the Luckenbach found her legs.

Our cripple broke no records for speed, but she was making revolutions, and by five o'clock we rejoined the convoy with her alongside.

So here is an eight hours' log for the 352: At nine in the morning she was responding to S O S-ing ninety miles away; at five in the afternoon we had her tucked away for the night in the column.

The tall quartermaster came up on the bridge to stand his watch. We were in our regular position, at the head of the column at twenty knots. He looked back at the fleet. "There you are, Lucky Bag. They must have had you checked up and counted in, a big ship and a three-million-dollar cargo, this morning, and here you are to-night—one they didn't get."



THE DOCTOR TAKES CHARGE

Every American destroyer over here rates a young surgeon. What some of these surgeons don't know about seagoing can be found in about six hundred pages of Knight's "Modern Seamanship," but that does not matter much. Let them look after the casualties; there are capable young naval officers to look after the seagoing end.

Most of these young surgeons have a taste for adventure. If they had not, they would not be over here. The 352 drew one, born and raised in a Southern State. Before coming over here he had viewed the Atlantic once or twice from a distance, which did not quite content him. His ancestors must have crossed that same Atlantic to get to America, and somewhere within him was a high-pitched string that vibrated to every thrill of that same ocean now.

He used to speak of these things in the smoking-room of the King's Hotel here, which is where every destroyer officer comes at least once between cruises to get a—cup of coffee. He would have liked to make a few sea voyages when he was a little younger, but if a fellow is ever going to amount to anything he has to settle down sometime and become a respectable member of society—so his folks were always saying, and so he took up medicine. He liked his profession. A doctor can do a heap of good in a suffering world—especially if people will only let him. But so many people want a young doctor to be experienced before they ever will call him in! "Get experience," they say; and not a doggone one in a dozen'll ever give a fellow any chance to get the experience. "What the most of 'em want is for some one else to give us the experience." He did as well as the next young doctor, but at times he would grow almost melancholy sitting before the smoking-room fire telling of his waiting for business in his home town.

He was not at all melancholy by nature. He could keep the ward-room mess ringing with darky stories on a quiet night in port. His messmates called him Doc; and when the ship was at sea they were all glad to see him on the bridge studying things out. He had plenty of time for that. In two cruises his only cases were one quartermaster, who got hove across the bridge and broke his nose, and a gunner's mate who broke his leg by being bounced out of his bunk one windy night. They were a disgustingly healthy lot, these destroyer crews.

But he felt pleased just to be out to sea. These high hills of moving water sure did give a little ship heaps of action sometimes. He would watch them from the bridge. He would watch the officer of the watch too, and the man at the wheel, and the lookouts with their eyes skinned for U-boats, and the signal quartermasters balanced on the flying bridge and sending their messages in a jumping sea-way. He would go down to the chart house with the navigator and stand by to pass him dividers and parallels. He would stop to sigh when he thought that if somebody had only tipped him off in time he might have gone to Annapolis and right now be a young naval officer dashing around on one of these same destroyers. Still, being a surgeon on one of them wasn't too bad. If they had a battle or anything, a ship's doctor wasn't going to be too far away.

It was in his third cruise that the 352 got the S O S which resulted in the rescue of the big steamer spoken of. There had been other S O S's—any number of them—but this time there was something doing for our young doctor. When she signalled that nine of her people had been wounded by shell and shrapnel fire, and the 352's skipper ordered a deck officer and a whale-boat away, he also told Doc to break out his medical gear and go along. Doc already had his surgical gear ready; from the first word of the shelling he had gone below, and now everything was laid out ready for action on the ward-room transom.

Over to the ship they went, all hands in life-vests, and while the deck officer of the 352 was cross-questioning the captain and engineer, and looking around to see how much damage had been done and so on, Doc was rigging up an operating-table between the chart house and the chart deck rail, slinging the table in sort of hammock style so that when the ship rolled she would not roll his patients overboard.

Doc was no mean little operator. The great danger to most of the wounded men was of infection. One after the other, he had his cases up, asked about four questions, had about four looks, and went to it. No knowing that the U-boat might pop up again and try a few more shells, or that a bulkhead would not give way, or a boiler blow up when they tried to make steam below. No knowing; no.

Up they came to his swinging table, where Doc took a probe, poked into the wound, wrapped cotton around the probe, soaked it in iodine, jabbed it in, twisted it around, swabbed it out, dressed it down, slapped the patient on the chest, said "Next," and did it all over again.

"Next! You'd think it was a blessed barber's shop," Doc heard one of them say. Only he was an officer—by the back of his head Doc knew it—some of them would have told him what they thought of his rapid-fire action. But it was no time for canoodling—it was war, and they were all rated as grown men and so able to stand a few little painful touches.

One terribly wounded patient gave him worry. On him Doc worked with great care. He was working on him, all the others being attended to, when the 352's deck officer came to say that he was going back to the destroyer to report. "The captain of this ship wants to abandon her," said the deck officer.

"Abandon ship and we will never be able to get this man I got here now off her—not in this sea, sir," said Doc. "And if he's left alone for two hours, he'll sure die."

"I'll signal what the skipper says." The officer went off with his crew in the whale-boat, leaving a hospital steward and a signal quartermaster to stay with the doctor.

Doc was working away on his hard case when his quartermaster came to say that the 352 had signalled that they were to stay aboard and that the steamer was to get under way and steer a course south half east magnetic.

The doctor, without looking up, said: "All right."

"Shall I tell the steamer's captain, sir?"

This time Doc looked up. "Why, of course, tell him. Why not? Why do you ask me that?"

"You are the ranking naval officer aboard here, sir. I take orders from you now, sir."

For about four seconds Doc neglected his patient. That was so; so he was.

"Yes, tell the captain."

The quartermaster ran up the bridge ladder. Doc gazed over the chart-rail down to the deck, up and around on the ship. "Doggone!" he breathed. "I am the ranking—I'm the only naval officer present." Then he shook his head and bent to his patient. He might have the rank, but the last thing he was going to do was to butt in on any regular ship's officers.

The disabled ship went on to her new course, south half east magnetic, with the destroyer steaming twenty-knot circles around her. And late in the afternoon they made the convoy. By night she was tucked in the rear of twenty other ships, the doctor and his emergency staff still aboard. They were to remain aboard until the steamer made port.

That same night something happened. On the steamer they did not know just what it was. They saw a column of white, a column of black—those who happened to be looking—another column of white, from the big ship of the fleet. And then dark came. There were radios flying about, but they were code messages and the radio man could not decode them because the first thing the steamer captain had done that morning when it looked as though the U-boat was going to make them take to the boats was to heave the code-books overboard. In the morning they would know.

Morning came, but with it not a ship in sight. Of twenty ships and a group of destroyers the night before, not one now. It was his signal-officer who thought it out first. "U-boats thick last night, sir, and the convoy must 'a' got orders to disperse or else change course," he said to the doctor.

"That sounds like good dope to me too." He turned to the steamer's captain. "Where were you bound, sir?"

"To Havre."

The doctor could see nothing else but to proceed to Havre, and on a zigzag course. The old captain did not know about the zigzagging; he had never done any zigzagging and did not know why he should now—besides, it mixed his reckoning all up.

The doctor said he would fix the zigzagging part of it, and, telling his hospital steward to have a special eye out for the very sick man, went into the chart house and proceeded to explain the zigzagging stuff. He paused to recall all he had ever learned while elbowing the 352's navigator over the chart-table; also the answers he had got to his questions while so doing.

You steer 45 degrees off the course you really want to make for so many minutes and then you steer 90 degrees from that for the same number of minutes back toward the course you really want to make—see, so—and that gives so many minutes to the good—see. That was one way.

"How many minutes?" asked the captain.

Doc had to stop and think that over. "Twice the square of the total minutes—no, no. Take twice the sum of the squares of the minutes on the two legs—and get the square root and then you have the hypothenuse of the two sides of the triangle; that is, you have the number of minutes' steaming you make good on your real course."

The old skipper knew nothing of square roots or hypothenuses or anything that looked like 'em, and he had always laid his course out by compass points.

"All right," said Doc, and after a while laid out the zigzag courses in compass points.

The old fellow did not quite like it, so all that day Doc alternated between his bad patient and the bridge to keep the skipper reassured about the zigzagging. Also he urged the crew to have a special watch out for U-boats.

That night Doc and the seasoned signal quartermaster stood alternate watches on the bridge. Doc would take a nap; the quartermaster would take a nap; between them they were figuring to keep a sort of official navy lookout. There were ship's crew men on the lookout too, but the reaction from the shelling had set in. Doc used to find them asleep in the bridge wings.

Just before dawn of the second morning Doc saw a shadow looming on their starboard bow. He had another look. It was another steamer—a big one. She was drawing nearer. "See that?" he called to the man at the wheel.

"See what?" sort of drowsed out the man at the wheel.

The trusty quartermaster from the 352 was getting a wink under the bridge-rail. Doc yelled to him, at the same time grabbing up the megaphone and roaring into the night air: "Where you-all going? Where the devil you-all going? Can't you-all see where you're going? Keep off—keep off."

"Can't you see where you're going?—keep off yourself."

By that time the signal quartermaster was awake and bounding across the bridge. He grabbed the wheel and began to spin it around. The ship's bow turned. Doc saw the big hulk go by him in the dark.

"Good work," said Doc. "How'd you spot him so quick?"

"I didn't spot him, sir. I don't see him yet. I went by the sound of his voice."

"Special little angel perched up aloft to look out for Jack when at sea—" sang Doc. "I thought that was a nursery rhyme. Now I know it's true. Between you and me, quartermaster, we'll get this ship to port yet."

They finished that night and the next day without seeing anything or having anything happen. Nothing except the argument about the forward compartment.

Among the shells which had come aboard the steamer was one which had punched a fine big hole in her bow. The ship's crew had put a plug there which worked all right till the ship took to rolling, which it did this day. The hole was just at the water-line. Before they knew anything about it there was the plug gone and the water up to a man's knees in the forward compartment. Doc said it should be stopped.

The old skipper wanted to know who was going to stop it. His crew? No, sir. He wouldn't ask any of 'em to go down there—besides, they wouldn't go. They were all used up since the battle with the U-boat. It made no difference if the ship sank. He'd had so much trouble that trip anyway that he wasn't too sure he wouldn't just as soon see her sink. He wasn't too sure they wouldn't all be better off in the boats. The U-boat had ordered them into the boats, and, only the destroyer had come along when it did, they would 'a' taken to the boats, and then they'd 'a' been picked up and no more watches or ships or holes in the for'ard compartment to worry about.

There was nothing left but for Doc to call for volunteers from among the gun crew. They were bluejackets, and their only complaint on the trip had been that the U-boat's guns had outranged their guns. They volunteered in a body—even the three wounded members. Doc took all the sound ones and went down into the forward compartment with a mattress and some scantling he found in the hold. The water was by then about up to the men's waists. It was hard, cold work, but they got it done—the mattress stuffed into the hole and the scantling shoring it up. It still leaked, but not much—a little auxiliary steam in there at intervals did not quite keep her dried out, but it kept her head above water, so that was all right. All that day she was a lone steamer plugging her halting way over a wide sea. Seven knots was her speed, and all hands tickled to be making that because of weak places showing from time to time in her steam department—damages by shell fire which they did not appreciate properly at first.

They were nearing the coast of France. They would have to make a landfall soon, and running without lights, as they were, made things hard, so the old skipper began to talk to Doc. If the doctor didn't mind, he would take full charge of the ship himself. She was a big ship with a three-million-dollar cargo, and if anything happened her, the owners would naturally look to him, the master, for it.

Doc thought it was a pretty cool way to wash out all record of what his little force had done, but he also recognized the old fellow's position. "It sounds reasonable," said Doc, "but I think you ought to give me an idea of what you're going to do."

"There's been no sun for a sight these two days, but we were here"—he made a new dot over an old one on the chart—"and logging so many knots to-day noon we ought to be"—he made another dot—"about here now."

"How about the tides?"

"The tides? Oh, yes! Well, I don't know about the tides. You see, I never made a port in France before."

"You didn't?"

There was a coast chart-book in the rack. Doc took it down and began to read it. He made regular trips down to see how his wounded patient was getting on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting things in chart-books—he used to read them aboard the destroyer.

That night the first mate came up on the bridge. Doc asked him what kind of a light he expected to pick up. The mate told him. Doc thought he was wrong, and said so.

Well, that was the light the old man had said they would make. Where was he now? Asleep, and Lord knows he needed it.

Doc did not wake him up. He had argued enough with him, but he didn't think the old man had allowed for the tides, and if anything happened there would be no more arguments—he would just assert his rank and take charge of the ship.

Doc went below, gave his worst wounded patient a night potion and saw him to sleep. He also went down to see the chief engineer, who had been wounded three times—once in the head. The Doc talked to him awhile—he was inclined to rave—gave him a half-grain jolt of morphine and saw him to sleep. He told the signal quartermaster that he had better have a nap before he dropped in his tracks.

"But the night-watches, sir?"

"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't—at least I hope not. Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.

Doc could have slept longer—about twenty-four hours longer, he thought, when he found himself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship which had wakened him.

By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock—three in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning. He had been asleep two hours.

He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was ashore.

Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that other light," the old man was saying.

"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind on U-boats."

That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me and you-all would have been. Look here"—he hauled down the chart-book and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."

It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes. By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside Havre.

Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her. About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them, the brav' Americains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck, saw the dramatic values and assumed most languid poses. Oh, the great pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.

The worst wounded one—there was no pretense about him—had to be carried down the gang-plank. Doc went with him. Good nursing was what he needed; and he was going to see that he got it.

He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two assistants turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch.

After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their journey back by train and steamer—the two men in dungarees and life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they wear on destroyers—was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is passed up here.

Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own.

"There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the place. There was a little square there with little cafes all around the square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee."

"So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was—only a little corner of France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little place after our week to sea.

"And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all saying, but I was one brave man—we were all brave men, there was no doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up and gave me a bunch of flowers."

He pulled out some kind of a faded flower and sighed. "She was about eight years old."

"No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster—he stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit—said:

"Yes, sir, a great life if we don't weaken."

"What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute since we left our ship."



THE 343 STAYS UP

Most shore-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers, would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim and floppety-like.

But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They have tried them out and know. You take a destroyer in a ninety-mile breeze of wind, put her stern to it, give her five or six knots' headway, and there she'll lay till the North Atlantic blows dry.

And that is not their only quality. Speed, of course; but not that either. They have a way of staying up after being cut up. There was that one which was of the first to cross over for the U-boat hunting game. One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those little collisions are bound to occur.

This one was hit amidships—bam!—and amidships is a bad place for a destroyer to be hit—her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie amidships.

This one of ours was hit so hard that nobody aboard ever thought she would stay up. She did go down till her deck was flush with the water's edge, but there she stayed; and her crew, climbing back aboard, took a hawser from the sloop-of-war, which towed her back to port. She was a fine heartening sight coming in. If she could come back, why worry about minor mishaps?

One of them—the 343 say—had performed her duty, which was to see a small convoy to a point well on toward a large port, and was returning to the naval base.

She was in no great rush, and, it happening to be smooth water, which is a rare thing up this way at this time of the year, she stopped for a little needed gun practice.

There was no more thought than usual of U-boats. Nobody would have been surprised if one popped up—it was a coast where they had been regularly operating—but no one was particularly expecting one.

Destroyers are bad medicine if you do not get to them quickly, and lately the U-boats seemed to care more to get merchant ships; but this day the lookouts were not loafing on their job on that account.

The 343 got through with her target practice, and, except for a few gunners' mates still coddling their pet guns, the crew were taking it easy around deck; and also, because of the smooth sea, the ship was making easy weather of it toward port.

Seeing a periscope is oftentimes a matter of luck. When they stay up it is easy enough, but when they are porpoising, shooting it up for just a look around, you have to be looking right at one. What they first saw on the 343 was the wake of this torpedo, coming on at a forty-knot clip for the waist of the ship.

The commander of the 343 was on the bridge at the time and saw the wake almost with the cry of the lookout. The wake was then pretty handy to the ship, and the torpedo itself would be fifty feet or so ahead of the wake.

There was no getting away from it then. The only hope was to take it somewhere else than amidships. Engine and boiler compartments were amidships. If it struck her there they might as well call it taps for all hands. So the commander put the wheel hard over—to take it on his quarter, where there was also a chance that it would pass under her.

Torpedoes generally strike twelve to fifteen feet under water, but just before this one could make the 343 it broached—came to the surface of the water—but without slacking her forty-knot speed. It was unusual and spectacular. The sun shone on the polished sides of her as she leaped from the sea.

She struck the 343 above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was nothing tremendous—so officers and men say, and so adding a little more data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth charges, of which there were two of 300 pounds each in the stern. Those who had any thoughts about it at the time were sure that if the torpedo did not get them the depth charges would.

When they went to look they found that thirty-odd feet of the after end of their ship had been blown clean off. The torpedo had hit them on the port side, and the wreckage was hanging from the starboard quarter. Of the after gun only the base was left; they never did see any of the rest of it. The gunner's mate, one of those men who love to keep a gun in shape, was swabbing it out at the time, and they never saw anything of him again.

The chief petty officers' quarters were farthest aft on the 343. The after bulkhead to their compartment was blown in, leaving the inside of the ship open to sea and sun. Fourteen men were in there at the time, lounging around or in their bunks. Many of them were bruised and all were shook up, but they all made the deck. They do not know how they made it, but they did. The after hatchway to the deck was closed with tumbling wreckage, so they must have gone up the midship hatch.

One man taking a nap in the cot bunk farthest aft had a part of the bulkhead blown past him. It cut off a corner of his cot and broke one of his legs, and blew him into the passageway in passing. Landing in the passageway he sprained his other ankle. He is not quite sure how he made the deck without help, but he did make it, and he says he beat some of them to it at that.

The man who was working on the after gun with the gunner's mate who was blown up, saw the shining torpedo leaping in the sun and heading straight for his part of the ship. If he did not do something he knew he was in for it, so he began to take long high leaps forward. The explosion came while he was in the air on his third long high jump. All he remembers happening to him after that was of an ocean of water flowing over him, and he not minding it at all. When he came to, the doctor was looking him over for broken bones, but did not find any. After the doctor left him he sat up and said: "I bet I've been as near to a torpedo exploding and getting away with it as anybody in the world, hah?" And "Yes," said one of his shipmates, "and I bet you made a world's record for three long high jumps, without a run, too. You sure did travel, boy."

When it was all over the two propeller shafts were still sticking out astern, one naked and shining in the sun; the other also shining and naked, but with a propeller still in place on it. Spotting that, the skipper ordered the engines turned. To their delight the shaft revolved, the ship began to move. No record-breaking pace, but—God love the builder of a good little ship—she was making revolutions. The wreckage hanging from her starboard quarter acted as a rudder, and so, instead of going straight ahead, she began to go round in circles.

She continued to make circles, and her officers and men stood to stations and waited for what next would happen. Destroyer people have it that there are grades of U-boat commanders—some of nerve, some only ordinary. The U-boat man with nerve enough to attack a destroyer is a good one. He will bear watching; so what they expected was to see this U-boat come up and finish the job. If she did come up and at the right place to get another torpedo in, then the 343 was in for a bad time. So they waited, some thinking one thing, and some another, but all agreeing that the odds were against them.

The U-boat did show again. They saw her conning-tower slipping through the water at about 1,500 yards. The skipper of the 343 was ready in so far as he could be ready with his poor little cripple. Crews were at gun stations, and that conning-tower had hardly got above the surface when two of the 343's guns cut loose at it. They got in four shots, the fourth one pretty handy. But no more. She submerged to the discouragement of one earnest gun-pointer. He leaned against the breech of his little 4-inch to say: "One more and I'd 'ave got her. Bet you me next month's pay that I get her if she shows for two shots again."

She did not show again, but her not showing did not end the 343's troubles. They could steam in circles, but it was not getting them anywhere. A few miles away was one of the roughest shores in the world, the kind where green seas piled up against rocky cliffs—and a tide that was already setting them toward it. A bad enough place in any kind of weather, but with wind and sea making, and this time of year!

It was about two in the afternoon they were torpedoed. By dark they were being driven by the tide and white-capped seas to the shore. They had one hope left. Their radio operator had managed to keep the radio gear in commission, and through all their troubles he had been sending out S O S calls, though not with too great hope that anybody would come in time. The U-boats had been pretty active thereabout, and it was not on any main sea route. There was always the chance, of course, that some war-ships would be somewhere near.

For one hour, two hours, three, four, five, six hours they drifted. Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S—he never let up with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks abeam. The Britisher got the word across the wind, and tried to pass a messenger—a light line, that is—across to the 343. They did not make it. They tried again and again, but no use. The 343 was then within a few hundred yards of the breakers.

The skipper of the Britisher then hailed that he would try to get a boat to them. They could hear him calling for volunteers to man the boat. He got the volunteers, and without being able to see every detail of it in the dark, the 343's people knew what was happening. They were making a lee of the trawler so as to get the boat over. But the boat was swashing in and out against the side of the ship—up on a sea and then bang! in against the side of the ship. Merely as a sporting proposition, their own lives not depending on it, the 343's people would have been praying for that boat to get safely away.

The boat managed at last to get away from the side of the mine-sweeper, and in time, pitching down on the rollers, they made out to heave a line aboard the 343. And on the deck of the 343 they were right there to grab it and bend it on to a hawser. Fine. Off went the mine-sweeper after she had taken her boat aboard, tugging heartily. She tugged too heartily for the length and size of the hawser. It parted.

They did it all over again—the lowering the boat in the rough sea, the passing the line, the bending on of the bigger line, the attempt to tow. And again it parted. Wouldn't that test men's faith in their good luck? The 343 thought so. Once more tried it, and once more it parted, but this time not parting until they were far enough off the beach to be safe till daylight.

At daylight a British sloop-of-war came along with a real big hawser and gave them a real tow to our naval base. A group of us were steaming out with a fleet of merchantmen to sea as she was being towed in. Our fellows would have liked to turn out to give her a little cheer, also to inquire into the details of her mishap, but we had to keep on going, and wait until our return to port after a cruise to have a look at her.

She was in dry dock when we got back to port, and the most smashed-up-looking object that any of us had ever seen come in from sea. The wonder was how she ever stayed up long enough to make port. That gaping after end open to sea and sky, and the bare propeller shaft sticking out from the insides of her—she sure did look like she needed nursing! They agreed that they were a lucky bunch to get her home.

One poor fellow was killed—a wonder there were not more—and all hands were sorry for him; but tragedy and comedy so often bunk together, and men who adventure are more apt to dwell on the humorous than the tragic side of things. There was that about the code-books. The instructions to all ships are to get rid of the code-books if there is ever any likelihood of the enemy capturing the ship. The code-books are bound in thick lead covers. They are kept in a steel box, and altogether they weigh—I do not know, I never lifted them—but some say they weigh 150, some say 200 pounds. After the 343 was torpedoed, an ensign grabbed up the code-book chest, tossed it onto his shoulder, and waltzed out of the ward-room passage and onto deck with it. You would think it was a feather pillow he was dancing off with. When the danger of capture was over our young ensign hooked his fingers into the chest handles to waltz back with it. But nothing doing. It took two of them to carry it back, and they did not trip lightly down any passageway with it either, proving once again that there are times when a man is stronger than at other times.

After the 343 made port the injured were handed over to the sick bay of the flag-ship. There were two of them who must have been pretty handy to the storm centre of the explosion. At least, it took two young surgeons on the flag-ship all of one day to pick the gun-cotton out of their backs.

There was another man. The doctors, when they came to look him over, found the print of a perfect circle on the fleshiest part of his anatomy. It was so deeply pressed in that the blue and yellow flesh bulged out all around from it. The doctors said it must have been made by a wash-basin being blown against him as he ran up the ladder to the deck. But the man himself knew better than that. "Excuse me, doctor," he said, "but it was nothing so light and soft as a wash-basin hit me. It was something more solid and bigger than that. It was the water-cooler, and I didn't run up any ladder—I was blown up."

The destroyer people have great faith in the durability of their little ships. They are slim-built, and not much thicker in the plates than seven pages of the Sunday paper—they know that, but maybe that is their safety. There is no getting a fair wallop at them. They evade the issue. One man compared them to a hot-water bottle. Try to swat a loaded hot-water bottle. And what happens? "When you poke it in one place don't it bulge out in another to make up for it? Sure it does. And how do you account for that other one we were talking about? A couple o' years ago—the one that had her stern cut off so that the men in the after compartment leaned out where the bulkhead had been, but wasn't then, and chinned themselves up to the deck from the outside? And how do you account for her bouncing along at twenty knots or more in a gale of wind and a rough sea, and nothing happening them? Get shook up—yes. But they come home, don't they? They sure do. Maybe it's luck, but also maybe it's the way they're thrown together—loose and limber-like."

Whatever it is, they are dashing in and out over there on their job of convoying merchant ships and hunting U-boats. They expect to get their bumps, and they do; but so long as they get an even break they are not kicking. The chart-house gang on the 343 say that they are satisfied they get an even break all right. If she did not fill her little three-straight that time then nobody ever did get any cards in the draw.

They were sticking a new stern onto the 343 when I left the naval base. When they get it well glued on she is going out again. Maybe that same U-boat—you can't always tell, some people have luck—maybe that same U-boat will come drifting her way again. And if they see her first—pass the word for the gun crews!



THE CARGO BOATS

I have spoken earlier of meeting cargo boats—tramp steamers, we call them at home—while crossing the Atlantic. In peace times a fellow would naturally expect to see them here, or almost anywhere else on the wide ocean; but to see them in these war days was to set a man wondering about them.

Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots, furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a view-point of their own!

At this naval base of which I have been writing, you could look almost any day and see 5, 10, or 20 of these cargo boats to moorings. And ashore was a pub—there were other pubs, plenty of them—but to this one particular pub came bunches of these cargo captains to forget things. (Without wishing to offend any prohibition advocate, I have to report that knocking around the world a man cannot help noticing that men who face peril regularly do sometimes take a drink to ease off things.)

A barmaid, answering to the name of Phyllis, presided over this pub, a blond, square-built, capable person, who had always about three or four of these captains standing on their heads. She was not without sentiment, but never letting sentiment interfere with business.

"Phyllis, my dear," a skipper would begin, and get about that far when she—her right hand reaching for the bottle of Scotch and her left for the soda—would be saying: "The same, captain?"—thereby choking off a great rush of words, and forwarding the business for which she drew one pound ten a week.

Before a creature of that kind these cargo captains were bound to preen themselves. They bought at frequent intervals, not at all like the ways of another group—not cargo captains—of whom one of our American warrant officers said: "You buy and buy and buy, and they drink and drink and drink. It comes time for them to buy, and when it does they submerge, and don't come up for air."

These cargo skippers were always coming up for air. They would hunt a man three stories up in his room, wake him out of his sleep, and haul him down-stairs to have just one more. Between drinks, after they got to know a man pretty well, they would talk of their sea experiences; and, after the fashion of all true adventurers, their talk was almost always of the humorous side of things.

There was a skipper there one morning who bid all hands, especially Phyllis, good-by. He was off to Alexandria. He would not be back for three months—more likely five or six months. Phyllis pinned a flower in his coat and off he went. From the pub window they saw him board his ship, and an hour later saw her steam out of the harbor and to sea.

That was at ten in the morning. At five in the afternoon—the lights were just being turned on—those in the pub who happened to be looking out of the window thought they saw this captain's ghost coming up the waterside with his crew trailing behind him. The crew looked as if they had dressed in a hurry and were scampering along to keep warm. But our skipper was wearing all he wore when he left the pub.

He drew nearer. It was no ghost. It was himself, even to the rose in his coat. He hailed Phyllis. She was talking to another skipper. The other skipper turned to see who was butting in, and seeing who it was, said: "To Egypt and back in seven hours—the quickest voyage ever I 'eard of!" Which comment so depressed the voyager that he refused to say anything about what had happened, except that five miles outside of the harbor he had been torpedoed, and they had to take to the boats in a hurry.

The foregoing is by way of introducing the captain who commented on the quick voyage. A few mornings later I was up at the Admiralty House when he came into the waiting-room, let himself carefully down into a mahogany chair, dropped his new soft gray hat into his lap, and looked around.

"A solemn place, ain't it? Would they 'ang a chap, d'y' think, if he was to 'ave a bit of a smoke for 'imself while waitin'?"

I said that I thought the fashion nowadays was to take a man out and stand him up against the wall and shoot him.

He was tall, heavily built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: "Oh, aye!" and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor all polished wood, the fireplace with no fire in it, so brassy and shiny that to put anything there would be treason—he dropped the cigarette into his hat.

The doorkeeper smelled something, but he wasn't one who looked on lowly things when he walked, and so did not see the little spiral of smoke curling up from the hat.

My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this shore-going flunky would catch him smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He stared determinedly at every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had passed on.

When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He viewed the hat sadly. "No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff."

I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life does not end with hat stores; there were fleets of little places where a man could sit down and talk about more important things than hats.

In the hotel smoke-room after lunch there was no sugar for our coffee. His sea-training began to show at once. "The thing you 'ave to learn to do at sea is to go on your own. Nobody doing much for a chap that 'e don't do for hisself, is there?" From his coat pocket he drew an envelope which once held a letter from home—in place of the letter now was sugar. "Preparedness—'ere it is"—and sweetened our coffee from the envelope.

He spoke of his life at sea. "I can't say that I like it—I can't say I don't like it—but it was my life before the war and it 'as to be since. You've seen my ship, 'aven't you, lying to moorings? Nothing great to look at, is she? but the managing director of our company—he has the 'andling of maybe a 'undred more like her—'Let 'em 'ave their grand passenger ships,' 'e says, 'but give me my cargo boats that pays for theirselves every two voyages.' The right idea 'e 'ad, I'll say for 'im. And for my part of it there is no everlastin' polishin' o' brahss and painting o' white work and no buying o' gold-laced uniforms at your own cost. And there's the bonus for me. Oh, aye! A bit of bonus ain't a bit of 'arm, you know, especially when you've a wife that's no eyesore to look at, and little kiddies growin' up.

"Torpedoed? Oh, aye. It's not to be expected of a man to escape that these days. My chum Bob, remember 'im—that was seven hours to Alexandria and back—with a rose in his coat? His fourth time torpedoed, that was. I've been blowed up only three times myself. Nothing much of anything special, the last time and the time before that—a matter of getting into boats and by and by being picked up—no more than that—no. But the first time—maybe it was a novelty-like then. 'Owever, I'd carried a load of coal to Naples and getting twenty-two pounds a ton for coal that cost two pound ten in Cardiff maybe makes it a bit clearer what the managing director 'ad in mind when 'e said: 'let 'em have their grand passenger ships, but give me my little cargo boats.'

"From Naples I go on to Piraeus in Greece, and we take a load on there—admiralty stuff, and not to be spoken of—and we put out for 'ome. She was a good old single-crew, this one o' mine. Twenty-five year old—not the worst, though I'd seen better. Well warmed up she could squeeze out eight knots, or maybe eight and a 'alf. I 'ung close to the land along that Greek shore, for if anything should 'appen ther's no sense 'aving too long a row to the beach in boats.

"Very good. We're rollin' along one morning when the radio man came in with a message which read: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.'

"And without ado we puts into a little place down at the 'eel of Italy, and that night I 'ad a 'ot barth an' a lovely long sleep in my brahss bed which the missus 'ad given me for Christmas the last time 'ome. And a great pleasure it was, I say.

"Next mornin' we put to sea again, and next day after comes another radio, and it says: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.' And we put into Malta, and that night again I 'ad another 'ot barth and a fine sleep in my brahss bed.

"We resume our voyage from Malta, and a two days later I gets another radio—more U-boats—and I puts into Algiers. Three times in one week that made with me 'aving me 'ot barth and a fine sleep in me brahss bed—grand good luck, I say now, and said it then to the mate, adding to it: 'There's a signal station west of Gibraltar—wouldn't it be delightful passing that signal station to get the word to put back to Gib and stop there for another night and I 'ave another 'ot barth and a lovely sleep in my four-poster bed.' But the mate 'e only says 'e didn't have no brahss bed aboard ship to sleep in, and he saved his 'ot barths, he did,'til he got 'ome to enjoy 'em proper.

"Summer-time it was, and I likes to take my little siesta after lunch—just like the Dons theirselves, y' know—and I'm 'aving me siesta next day after lunch when something woke me up. There's a shelf of books on the wall o' my room—chart-books and the like—and when all at once I see them pilin' down on top of me I say to myself: 'Somethin's 'appened.' And so it 'ad. The mate 'e sticks 'is 'ead in the door and says: 'We're torpedoed, sir.'

"'There goes my bonus,' I says, and goes on deck.

"We carried a 3-inch gun in a little 'ouse aft, and there was the mate firing at the U-boat, which was out of water and maybe two miles away. It was one of those out-of-date guns the navy would have no more to do with, and so they passes it on to us. New good guns would probably be wasted on us, and maybe that's true. None of us aboard ever fired a shot from the gory weapon till this day. The mate fired two shots at the U-boat, but 'e don't 'it anything. The U-boat fires two shots at us and she 'its something. One of 'em pahsses through the chart house, and the other tears a nice little 'ole in 'er for'ard.

"That'll do for that gun practice,' I says.

"'Aren't you goin' to 'ave a go at 'em?' says the mate.

"'You can 'ave all the go at 'em you please,' I says, 'after we leave the ship. Besides you there's 19 men and 4 Eurasians in this crew, and some of 'em will maybe like to see 'ome again—I know I do!'

"We get into the boats, myself takin' along what was left of a second case of Scotch, and good old pre-war Scotch it was, not the gory infant's food they serve these days that a man 'as to take a tumblerful of to know 'e's 'aving a drink at all. I also took along three sofy cushions, hand-worked by the missus, with pink doves and cupids and the like—rare lookin' they was. 'A man might's well be comfortable,' I says.

"I 'ad a cook. 'If comfort's the word,' says the cook, 'I might's well take along the wife's canary,' and 'e takes it along in a cage in one 'and, and a bag of clothes in the other. 'E's in the boat when 'e thinks to go back for a package of seed 'e'd left for the canary on the shelf in the galley. 'Hurry up with your bird-seed,' I says, and as I do a shell comes along and explodes inside of 'er old frame somewheres, and the cook says maybe 'e'll be gettin' along without the seed—the canary not being what you'd call a 'eavy eater, anyway.

"The mate 'ad a cameraw, and when we're clear of the ship he would stand up and set the cameraw on the shoulders of a Eurasian fireman, and take shots of the ship between shells.

"In good time one last shell 'its 'er, and down she goes. The U-boat moves off, and we see no more of 'er.

"It's a fine day and a lovely pink sunset, and there's a beautiful mild sirocco blowing off the African shore to make the 'ot night pleasant as we approach it in the boats. A man could 'ardly arsk to be torpedoed under more pleasant conditions, I say, and we continue to row toward the shore in 'igh 'opes. It's maybe two in the mornin' when we see the side-lights of a ship. She's bound east—a steamer—and we know she's a Britisher, because we're the only chaps carried lights in war zones at that time. Carryin' lights at night o' course made us grand marks for the U-boats, but there was no 'elp for it. A board o' trade regulation, that was, and no gettin' away from what the board o' trade says. We had our choice of carryin' lights and losin' our ships, or not carryin' lights and losin' our jobs. So we lost our ships. After a year and a 'alf of war some bright chap in the board said that maybe it would be a good idea to change the regulation about carrying lights, and they did. And about time, we said.

"Some of the crew were for 'ailing the ship in the night. ''Ail 'ell!' I says. 'D'y' think I want to be took into that rotten 'ole of a Port Said, or maybe Alexandria, and that end of the Mediterranean fair lousy with U-boats. Besides, we'll get 'ome quicker this way,' I says, and allows her to pass on. In the mornin' we run onto the beach, and 'ardly there when a crowd of Ayrabs come gallopin' down on 'orseback to us. 'We'll be killed now,' says the mate, and talks under his breath of stubborn captains, who wouldn't 'ail a friendly ship's light in the dark, but the only killing the Ayrabs do is two young goats for breakfast. And they make coffee that was coffee, and we had a lovely meal on the sand. And by and by they steered us along the shore to where was a French destroyer, which takes us over to Gibraltar, and from Gib we passed on through Spain and France to Havre. Three weeks that took, and I never 'ad such a three weeks in all my life. 'Eroes, ragin' 'eroes—that's wot we were!

"At Havre the French authorities took the mate's pictures out of the cameraw, and they never did give 'em back. Except for that, it was a fine pleasure, that land cruise 'ome.

"Lucky? Oh, aye, you may well say it. Three times in one week I 'ad me 'ot barth and my lovely sleep in me brahss bed—it's not to be looked for with ordinary luck, you know."

* * * * *

One day the destroyer to which I was assigned put to sea. There were other destroyers, and we were to take a fleet of merchantmen from the naval base to such and such a latitude and longitude, and there turn them loose. My friend's ship was of the convoy.

We made such and such a latitude and longitude, and there we turned them loose, signalling the position to them and waiting for acknowledgment. They acknowledged the signal. We then hoisted the three pennants which everywhere at sea means: Pleasant voyage! They answered with the three pennants which everywhere spells: Thank you. And no sooner done than away they belted, each for himself, and let the U-boats get the hindmost.

The hindmost here was the rusty old cargo boat of my friend. I could see her for miles after the others were hull down; and long after I could see her I could picture him—walking his lonely bridge and his ship plugging away at her 7 or maybe 7-1/2 knots across the lonely ocean.

Three times torpedoed and taking it all as part of his work! Some day they may get him and he not come back; and when they do the world will hear little about him. Hero? He a hero? Why a shore-going flunky had him bluffed for smoking a surreptitious cigarette in high quarters! 'Ero? Not 'im. Why 'e don't even wear a uniform.

So there they are, the wheezing old cargo boats and their officers and crew. British, French, Italian, American, but mostly British.

No heroes, but the Lord help their people if they hadn't stayed on the job.



FLOTILLA HUMOR—AT SEA

We were a group of American destroyers convoying twenty home-bound British steamers. There was one ship, a P. & O. liner, a great specimen of camouflaging.

She was the only ship in the convoy that was camouflaged, and she rode in stately style two lengths out in front of the others. All of which made her a prominent object. Our officers felt like telling her to dress back; but she had a British commodore aboard, and for an American two or three striper to try to advise a British commodore—well, it isn't done.

All day long she rode out in front of the column, and all day long our fellows kept saying things about her.

"Isn't she the chesty one!"

"Look at the big squab with all that war-paint on—how does she expect any U-boat to overlook her?"

"That big loafer, she'd better watch out or she'll be getting hers before the day's gone!"

U-boats were thick around there. One of them must have come up, looked the convoy over, and said, "Well, there's nothing to this but the big one!" and, Bing! let her have it, for it was not yet quite dark when those who were looking at her saw a column like steam go into the air, a black column like coal follow it, and after that a column of water boiling white.

One of our destroyers hopped to twenty-five knots, dumped over a 300-pound "ash-can," and got Mister U-boat. At least, the British admiralty later gave her 100 per cent on the circumstantial evidence. Two other destroyers—the 396 and the 384, we will call them—went at once to the job of taking off passengers from the sinking ship.

That was at five minutes to six, just before dark. It had interrupted dinner on our ship; but by and by we went back to the ward-room to finish eating. It is always good business to eat—no knowing when a man will be needing a good meal to be standing by him inside. And we were still eating when the messenger came in with a radio. He passed it to the skipper, who read it to himself, whistled, and then read aloud: TORPEDOED—CLAN LINDSAY.

The Clan Lindsay was another of our convoy, and she had been within 1,000 yards of our ship when we last came about to zigzag back across the front of our column.

We looked at one another, and one said: "Well, you got to hand it to Fritz for being on the job every minute."

And another: "Yes, but it looks like a big night to-night. Two in an hour! And eighteen more ships and eight destroyers to pick from yet! If he starts off like that, what d'y' s'pose he'll be batting by morning?"

The ward-room on our ship opens onto the ship's galley; and from the ship's galley another door opens onto the deck. Through the open galley-door just then came a muffled explosion—a great Woof!

We all thought just one thing—they've got us too!—and we all sort of half curled up, and would not have been a bit surprised if the next instant we found ourselves sailing through the deck overhead. The feeling lasted for perhaps three seconds, and then our skipper, happening to look up, saw that the colored mess-boy George was grinning widely.

"What the devil you laughing at?" barked out our skipper.

George took his eyes off the galley-door, but his grin remained. Said George: "Cap'n, I see de flame. The galley stove just done bust!"

The galley stove on our ship was an oil-burner. It had back-fired, and so the loud Woof!

Later it came out that the Clan Lindsay wasn't torpedoed at all; but one of our destroyers dropped a depth charge so close to her to get a U-boat that she thought she was.

* * * * *

The camouflaged big liner sank, but not until the two of our destroyers standing by had taken off every one of the 503 passengers, one taking the people off the deck, the other picking up those in the small boats. One destroyer—the 396, say—took off 307 of these passengers. Her skipper passed the word by radio to the 384, which had gathered in 196 passengers, including the commodore. The 384 got the message, only she got it 7 instead of 307 people rescued.

"Seven survivors!" said the 384's skipper. "I wonder why she radioed that?" He meditated over the puzzle and by and by solved it to his satisfaction.

"Of course, what she wants is for us to take off the seven and add 'em to our own." He took measures to meet the emergency, and then followed this little incident:

Aboard the 396 they were busy trying to find space for their 307 passengers when a lookout heard a Putt! putt! putt! coming over the water. The officer of the deck listened. Everybody on the bridge listened. Putt! putt! putt! it came. The officer of the deck reported to the skipper. The skipper wondered who it could be, when just then a radio message arrived: "Am sending a boat—384."

"Sending a boat? What for?" He meditated over that puzzle and then he solved it—as he thought. "Sure. That British commodore she picked up is coming to see how the survivors aboard here are getting on. That's it"—he turned to the watch-officer—"you know how these Britishers are for regulations. Even in the midst of a mess like this we'll have to kotow to his rank or he'll probably be reporting us. So rouse out six side-boys, line 'em up, rig up the port ladder, have the bugler stand by for ta-ra-rums and all that stuff."

They did that, shoving their crowded survivors out of the way to make room for the ceremony.

The Putt! putt! putt! comes nearer and nearer. Next, from out of the blackness of the ocean they make out a little motor-dory. Balanced out on the gunwale of the little dory, when it comes nearer, they see an American bluejacket smoking a cigarette. No one else was in the dory.

The dory ran alongside. It was about a 14-foot dory—no smaller one in the flotilla. The skipper of the 396 looked down at him. "What you want?"

The bluejacket removed the cigarette from his lips. "I'm from the 384, sir."

"Yes, yes, but what do you want?"

"I've come, sir"—he waved his cigarette-stub airily—"to take off the survivors. The captain thought I might be able to make one load of 'em."

* * * * *

When the big P. & O. liner reported herself torpedoed that evening, a destroyer—not one of ours—picked up the message 100 miles or so away; and at once radioed: COMING TO YOUR ASSISTANCE—GIVE POSITION, COURSE, AND SPEED.

That was proper and well-intentioned, but as the 384 and the 396 were already standing by, a radio was sent back: EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT—NO HELP NEEDED—THANK YOU.

That did not seem to satisfy the inquirer. WOULD LIKE TO HELP—GIVE POSITION, SPEED, AND COURSE.

Everybody being busy, nobody bothered to answer that. By and by came another radio: THIS IS THE DESTROYER BLANK—GIVE POSITION, SPEED, AND COURSE.

He was so evidently one of those Johnnies who are always volunteering to do things not needful to be done that nobody paid any further attention to him. But he kept right on sending radios. By and by, for perhaps the seventh time, came: THIS IS THE DESTROYER BLANK—PLEASE GIVE POSITION, SPEED, AND COURSE OF TORPEDOED SHIP.

At which some one—nobody seemed to know who, but possibly some undistinguished enlisted radio man whose ears were becoming wearied—sparked out into the night: POSITION OF TORPEDOED SHIP? BETWEEN TWO DESTROYERS. HER SPEED? ABOUT FOUR FEET AN HOUR. HER COURSE? TOWARD THE BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC.

Nobody ever found who sent that message; nobody inquired too closely; but all hands thanked him. The flotilla heard no more from the bothersome destroyer.

* * * * *

The business of hunting U-boats is a grim one. The officers and men engaged in it do not like to dwell on the hard side of it. They do like to repeat stories of the humorous side of it.

One of our destroyer commanders over there has a personality that the others like to hang stories onto. He is a quick-thinking, quick-acting man named—well, say Lanahan. He was one day on the bridge of his ship when the lookout shouted: "Periscope!"

"Charge her!" yelled out Lanahan.

Away they went hooked-up for the periscope, which everybody could now see—about 200 yards ahead.

"He's a nervy one—see her stay up!" said the officer of the deck, who was standing beside the wheel, and had glasses on the periscope. And then, hurriedly: "I don't like the looks of her, captain—it looks like a phony periscope to me—as if there was a mine under it!"

"To hell with her—ram her anyway!" snapped Lanahan.

The deck officer had not once taken the glasses off the periscope. Suddenly he let drop his glasses, grabbed the wheel and pulled it hard toward him.

Lanahan had stepped to the wing of the bridge and was leaning far out to get a glimpse of the U-boat. What he saw beneath him as his ship scraped by was not a U-boat, but a great white mine. He watched it slide safely past the bridge, past his quarter, past his stern. Then, turning around, he said gravely to his deck officer:

"You're right—it was a mine."

* * * * *

There was another young officer—Chisholm call him—who played poker occasionally. He commanded a flivver, which is the service name for the smaller class of destroyers, the 750-ton ones.

In our navy there are plenty of young officers who will tell you that they never built destroyers which keep the sea better than that same little flivver class. Young Captain Chisholm of the 323 was one.

One morning, having convoyed a fleet of merchant ships safely up the channel, the 323 was one of a group of destroyers making the best of their way to their base port. Officers and men who have been hunting U-boats for a week or so do not like to linger along the road home; so it was every young captain giving his ship all the steam she could stand and let her belt.

It was breaking white water all around when they started. It grew rougher. Chisholm in the 323 was going along at twenty knots when a poker-playing chum came along in his big 1,000-ton destroyer. Her nose hauled up on the quarter of the 323; up to her beam; up to her bridge. As he passed the 323—and he passed quite close to let all hands view the passing—the poker-playing friend leaned out and megaphoned across:

"What you making, Chiz?"

"Twenty knots!" hailed back Chisholm.

"I am seeing your twenty knots and raising you five!" returned the other, and passed on.

"The boiler-riveted nerve of him!" gasped Chiz. "But let him wait!"

The sea grew yet rougher. The 323 was bouncing pretty lively, but hanging onto her twenty knots. "And at twenty you let her hang if she rolls her crow's nest under!" said Chisholm to his watch-officer, "and I'll betcher we won't be acting rudder to this bunch going into port!"

It was at ten in the morning that the big one had passed them. It was four in the afternoon, and the 323 was still going along at twenty knots when from out of the drizzle ahead her bridge made out the stern and funnels of a destroyer. It was Chiz's poker-playing chum, and his ship was making heavy weather of it. The able little 323 came up to her stern; breasted her waist, her bridge, and as he passed her (and he came quite close to let all hands view the passing), young Captain Chisholm leaned out from his bridge and roared through a long megaphone: "I call yuh!"

He beat the big one fifty minutes into the naval base.

* * * * *

There are two channels leading into the naval base port—call them West and East. This same Chisholm was one day headed for port in the usual hurry and was already well into the west channel when a signal was whipped out from the signal hill. It was for his ship and it read: "West Channel mined last night by U-boats. Proceed to sea and come in by East Channel."

Chiz did not proceed to sea. All the harbor men who were watching saw him come straight on through the gap in the barrage, and safely on to his mooring. Also all the harbor knew that next morning he had to report to the admiralty and explain.

The story of his explanation was not told by himself. But an officer friend, a great admirer—call him Mac—had gone with him to the admiralty. Here the next day Mac told the story in the smoke-room of the King's Hotel:

"Well, Chiz went and—you know his courtly style—he has his cape over his shoulders—and he salaams and says, 'Good morning, sir.'

"The old man looks up and says like ice: 'You got my signal yesterday afternoon?'

"'I did, sir.'

"'Then why did you not turn back and come in by the other channel?'

"'Sir,' says Chiz, 'may I be allowed a few words?'

"'Very few. What have you to say?'

"'Sir,' says Chiz, 'I have been trained to believe that the one word a naval officer should not know is fear. In our navy, sir, we reverence the tradition of your own Admiral Nelson, who at the siege of Copenhagen put his glass to his blind eye and said: "I see no signal to withdraw!" and continued the fighting to a victory.'

"'Have you a blind eye, too?'

"'My sight is good, thanking you, sir, for inquiring, but in my own navy we also have the tradition of Admiral Farragut, who at Mobile Bay said: "Damn the torpedoes—go on!" and his fleet went on to victory. And there was Admiral Dewey, who said: "Damn the mines!" at Manilla, and went on to victory.'

"'What are you coming at?' roars the old man. 'Did you get my signal?'

"'I did, sir. And my first instinct—the instinct of all our naval officers—is to obey all orders of our superiors, sir. But I was well into that channel when I got the signal, sir. And as I have said, sir, my first instinct was to obey orders. But also I stop and reflect, for I have also been trained to believe that hasty judgments work many evils, sir, and I consider and find myself saying to my deck officer: "This ship, Mac, is 300 feet long, and under her stern there are two big propellers. If ever we turn this 300-foot ship in this channel with those two propellers churning and there's any loose German mines around, there won't be a blamed one of 'em she'll miss. But if I keep her straight on, there's a chance. So hell's afire!" I says to Mac—"there's only one thing for us to do now and that is to keep straight on!" And I kept straight on, sir—and, I beg leave to report it now, sir—we made our mooring safely.'

"And that's all there was to that," concluded Mac.

There was a long silence in the smoke-room when Mac had done, and then a voice asked: "If Chiz had gone to sea and come in by the other channel—it was almost dark at the time—he would have been too late to make the barrage, wouldn't he?"

"He sure would," said Mac.

"Which would mean that he would be kept turning his wheels over outside the net all night?"

"He sure would."

"As it was, he got in in plenty of time for that little game up-stairs last night?"

"He was in a little game," admitted Mac.

Another silence, and then another voice: "Well, poker or no poker, Chiz's dope on that damn-the-torpedo stuff isn't the worst in the world!"



FLOTILLA HUMOR—ASHORE

The incident reported in the previous chapter was not young Chisholm's first interview with the British admiral.

Mac went on to tell how when, after his first cruise, Chiz came to the naval base to report. He had heard that the old fellow in charge believed that the Lord made the earth for admirals, especially British admirals, but beyond that he knew nothing of his peculiarities.

However, after his cruise, Chiz went whistling up the hill to report. By and by he was admitted to the presence of the admiral, who was seated at a flat desk in the middle of the room, gazing straight ahead.

The old chap looked pretty frosty. Chiz waited a moment, then ventured a cheery "Good morning, sir."

The face at the desk did not even turn to look at him, but the thin lips almost opened and a rasping voice said: "Got anything to say to me?"

Chiz was one of the sociable souls, and he would have liked to sit down and talk in an informal way of several little sea things that he thought were fairly interesting. But he had not been asked even to sit down, and the voice froze him. So, "Why, no sir, nothing special to report," was all he could find to say.

"H-m. Nothing to say? Then why waste my time or your own? Might as well get out, hadn't you?"

Chiz got out.

"An American lieutenant-commander in this place must rate about seven numbers below a yellow dog," said Chiz to Mac when he came out.

Chiz had four days in port (Mac is still telling the story) after that cruise, and two days after his visit to the hill there was a cricket-match between a team from our flotilla and a team from theirs. The idea was for all hands to forget rank for a while, get into the game, and so cement the entente between the two nations.

Chiz was picked for one of our team, and you all know what a husky he is, and what he used to do with a baseball-bat. There aren't many who ever hit 'em any further or oftener than Chiz on the old Annapolis ball-field. He was one of the first of our fellows to go to bat. He's standing there—in the box, or whatever they call it, waiting for one to his liking; and looking around the field wondering where he will place it when he gets one to his liking. And as he looks he spies his friend the admiral, playing what we'd call left field. And just beyond the admiral the ground sloped away for a hundred yards or so.

Chiz hefts his bat—and you know those cricket-bats, what they look like and how they feel after you've been used to meeting fast ones with a narrow baseball-bat. They are wide and heavy and springy. Chiz doesn't pay any attention to three or four balls that come along, except to fend them away from the wicket with his wide cricket-bat. He knew what he wanted, and by and by he got one—one about knee-high with a little incurve to it. Chiz sets himself and swings and whale-O it goes, over the old admiral's head and down the slope beyond.

Chiz makes all the runs the law allows—six, I think it is—and he's sitting resting on the wide part of his cricket-bat before the admiral even shows the top of his head over the hill with the ball. When he does and heaves it about half-way to the pitcher, or bowler, or whatever they call him, he's out of breath.

Chiz sets himself for another one knee-high with an inshoot, and when he gets one he whales it again, and away trots the admiral on another hunt down the hill. And Chiz makes six more runs before they even see the top of the admiral's head over the brow of the hill.

The third time, and the fourth time, Chiz sets for a knee-high one with an inshoot to it, and the third time and the fourth time he belts it over the old fellow's head and down the long slope. But on the fourth time the old fellow doesn't throw the ball in. He walks in with it and he calls in the high official umpires, or whoever they are in charge, and they have a conference, and the next thing they call the game off. By this time, doubtless (so the word was passed), the American officers have caught the idea of the game, and next time there would be a real game and so on.

But there was no next game. However, next day Chiz puts out to sea, and when he's into port again he calls up on the hill as per instructions. And by and by he is passed again into the presence, who is sitting just as before at the flat desk in the middle of the room, and gazing straight before him.

This time Chiz doesn't speak, not even to say; "Good morning, sir." And the graven image at the desk doesn't speak either, and there's a silence for maybe a minute, and then the old fellow barks out: "What are you standing there for? You wish to see me?" And Chiz barks out in his turn: "No, sir, I don't wish to see you."

"You do not wish to see me? Then what are you doing here?"

And Chiz cracks out: "I'm here because your orders compel me to be here, sir."

Zowie!—that straightened the old boy up. He took a look at Chiz, and he says, after a while and almost pleasantly: "Have a chair."

And Chiz has a chair, and they have a talk, and after that Chiz finds him a lot easier to get along with. Chiz says now that the old fellow isn't such a terrible chap—not after you get onto his curves.

* * * * *

When we first came over (Mac is still speaking), most of the topsiders over here were strong for the entente stuff, and a good thing, too—why not?

Our fellows were mostly strong for it, too—two or three so strong that it was hard to tell whether they were Americans or something else—even their accents.

And, as I say, most of the officers of our own over here were for it—most of them. But you can't rid everybody overnight of long-inherited notions. There was one chap we used to meet, and he sure was the most patronizing thing!

Now, we know we haven't the biggest navy in the world, but as far as it goes we think it is pretty good. As good as anybody's, man for man, and ship for ship—but let that pass.

This chap, who never could see anything in our navy, came in here one day. He wasn't bad. He was just one of those naturally foolish ones who thought he was a little brighter than his company. The topsiders would be working night and day to create good feeling, and he was the kind would come along and break up the show—not exactly meaning to.

This was in the hotel bar here, where a bunch of us were easing off after a hard cruise, when he comes along. He doesn't like the names of our destroyers. In his navy there was significance in the names they gave to a class of ships.

"Take Viper, Adder, Moccasin, and so on—they suggest things y' know. Dangerous to meddle with and all that sort of thing, y' know. But your people name your ships after men evidently—David Jones, Conyngham, McDonough. I say, who are they—Presidents or senators or that sort, or what?"

Lanahan was there—the hell-with-her-ram-her-anyway Lanahan—and we all just naturally turned him over to Lanahan, who had west-of-Ireland forebears, and never did believe in letting any Englishman put anything across—nothing like that anyway.

"You never read much, I take it, of our history?" says Lanahan.

"Your history? My dear chap, I had hard work keeping up with my own."

"No doubt. But you've heard of the American Revolution?"

"I dessay I have—Oh, yes, I have!"

"Well, you spoke of Jones. If you mean John Paul, then there was a naval fight one time in the North Sea—the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard."

"I say, old chap, I didn't mention John Paul Jones. David Jones is the name of your destroyer out in the harbor now."

"David Jones? Let me see. Why, sure, David Jones was a New England parson who boarded around among the God-fearing neighbors for his keep on week-days and preached the wrath of God and hell-fire for his cash wage—five pound a year—on Sundays. He was a devout man. If thy finger offend thee, cut it off. But a sort of muscular Christian, too. If thy enemy cross thee, go out and whale the livers and lights out of him—same as we're trying to do to the U-boats now.

"Well David lived in the shadow of the church till he was thirty-seven years of age. Then the Revolution broke, and David, in whose veins flowed the blood of old Covenanters, took a running long jump into it. He started in as deck-hand or, perhaps, it was cook's helper, but there was salt in his veins too, and rapidly he learned his trade. And soon rose in his new profession until he was master of his own ship, and, as master, raising the devil among the coasters which used to cruise out of Maritime Province ports in those days. The captures he made of vessels loaded with hay and potatoes, and so on, materially reduced the high cost of living for New England folks in those days.

"Conyngham? He was a young American lad who did not come of any particularly good old stock, meaning that he did not come from Massachusetts or Virginia probably. He went to sea as a midshipman on an American sloop-of-war. And he turned out to be some little middy. Ensign, lieutenant, commander—man, he just ran up the ladder of naval rank. And got a ship of his own—a fine, young, able sloop-of-war, and with this sloop-of-war he would run out from the French channel ports and harry the English coast and English shipping. Never heard of him? No? Well, well!—and he so famous in his day that King George put up a reward of 1,000 pounds for his capture dead or alive. But they never captured him.

"And Barry? He was the Wexford boy who captured 200 English prizes more or less in the West Indies. Paul Jones trained under Barry before he had a ship of his own. And McDonough? He—but am I boring you?"

"No, no—it is very interesting."

"I am glad. Well, McDonough was the commodore who fought the battle of Lake Champlain against your people. He opened that battle with prayers for the living and closed it with prayers for the dead. You want to watch out for those fellows who pray when they go to war. Their technic is sometimes pretty good. Their spirit is always good. While Mac was looking over the booty after that fight, a funny thing happened. He——"

"I say, old chap, it's all very interesting, exceedingly interesting, but what d'y' say to another little nip before I go? I've got to run along to see the chief now. What will you have to drink?"

"Sure. A nip of Irish, if you please. And here"—Lanahan held up his glass—"here's to the memory of dead heroes—may they always be preferred to crawling reptiles when it comes to naming our fighting ships!"

After the other fellow had gone Lanahan turned to us. "Say, fellows, I know I got Paul Jones and Barry and McDonough right, but how near was I on Davey Jones and Conyngham? Something tells me I got their histories mixed."

* * * * *

This admiral, of whom our fellows used to spin the yarns, was a unique character. He lacked imagination, and he had the manner of a rat-terrier toward people not of his own kind; but he was one good executive.

Devotion to duty—conscience—those were his beacon lights. He had been known, when the minister of the local church wasn't up to standard, to walk into the pulpit, and deliver the sermon himself. Before he came to take command of this coast district the U-boats had been raising Cain there. There was a fleet of steam-trawlers handled by their old fishing captains and crews, whose special duty it was to sweep up the waters just outside the harbor for mines. It was at that time a dangerous business, but it was also monotonous. It was a duty most easy to evade.