Who was to say they had not swept up? No cove at a naval base five hundred miles away, that was sure! Even if mines were found there after they reported it swept clear, what would that prove? The Huns were laying mines all the time, weren't they? So—war days are hard enough anyway—why not ease up now and again?

They eased up. Many a snug little place there was along the coast where a crew could go ashore and have a pleasant time for a day or two. There were reports to fill out, but what were reports? Ship a clerk in the crew and who would know? Surely not some aide at the naval base who spent his busiest hours taking the admiral's niece to tea fights!

The British public will probably stand more from their lawfully ordained rulers than any other public on earth. They stood for a good many ships being mined on that coast before they began to ask the why of it.

The powers returned with facts and figures, percentage tables, and so on, of ships departing and ships arriving; proving clearly that the number of ships lost was no more than was to be expected. Whereupon the British public took to writing letters to the press. British politicians take letters to the press seriously; a new man, the admiral we have been talking of, was sent to take charge of the district.

He got down to business. He fitted out a 30-knot despatch-boat and away he went! All along that coast he pounced in on little harbors where mine-sweepers should be found working outside, but where he found them working mostly inside at little sociable gatherings where there was a dance or the like going on in front and a little something nourishing to drink in back. Our stern and efficient admiral lit into them like a gull into a school of herring. Out by their gills he hauled them, and pretty soon the B. P. began to read less of percentages and more of results.

One of the first results was that some trawler skippers lost their jobs, and new skippers took their places. This was at the time that rewards of five pounds or so were offered the skippers bringing a mine into port.

That five pounds looked pretty good to one of the new skippers; and when one night at a pub a discharged skipper confided to him where there was a nest of German mines, out he goes into the gray dawn to be there first. He's there first, and sure enough it's a grand little spot for mines. He hooks into one, lashes it under his quarter and goes scooting back to harbor, which happens to be the naval base.

Proudly and noisily he steamed along, shouting to everybody he met of his good luck, and asking the course to the admiral's ship. Everybody he met gave him the course and also the full width of the channel as he passed. He ran alongside the flag-ship, hailing loudly for the admiral as he steamed up.

The admiral was not on board, but his aide was, and the aide came on to have a look over the side. He saw the mine bouncing up and down between the mine-sweeper's quarter and his own ship's side. Shove off—"get away from us!" yelled the aide. "Suppose you press one of those little feelers and blow us all to pieces—get away, I tell you!"

The mine-sweeper skipper looked up—"Feelers, sir?"—and then looked down at the mine. "Feelers, sir? Oh-h, you mean them little 'orns stickin' out on 'er? Bly-mee, sir, I thought I'd knocked 'em all hoff afore I lashed her alongside. But 'ave no fear, sir, there's only two of 'em left, and I'll bloomin' well soon"—he reaches for an oar and went bouncing aft—"bloomin' well soon knock them hoff, too, sir!"



THE UNQUENCHABLE DESTROYER BOYS

One day last summer a group of our destroyers were sent across the Atlantic. It was a night-and-day strain for all hands—watching out for raiders, watching out for U-boats, watching out for everything, and grabbing snatches of sleep when they could.

Arriving at their naval base, every skipper of the little fleet felt pretty well used up. But every worth-while skipper thinks first of his men. One we have in mind passed the word to his crew that whoever cared to take a run ashore to stretch his legs and forget sea things for a while, why—to go to it. And stay till morning quarters if they wished.

As fast as they could clean up and shift into shore clothes they were going over the side. Our young captain felt then that perhaps there was a little something coming to himself; so he turned in, and he was logging great things in the sleeping line when the anchor watch, who was also a signal quartermaster, woke him up with:

"Signal from the admiralty, sir."

"Read it."

The S. Q. M. read it—an order to proceed at once to an oil dock and take oil.

It was nine o'clock at night when our skipper had come to moorings. It was now one in the morning, and he knew he could have slept for another week; however, orders were to oil up.

He turned out and mustered what remained aboard of his crew. There were about a dozen. He sent three to the fire-room, three to the engine-room, one here, another there, himself took the wheel, and with his signal quartermaster acting as a sort of officer of the deck, set out to find the oil dock.

He had never seen that harbor before that night, but he sheered close in to every ship's anchor light he saw and hailed for the course to the oil dock. Most of them did not know, but one now and then passed him a word or two, and so he bumped along and by and by made the oil dock.

Officers who have business with it will tell you that the naval organization of the British is pretty complete. Our young skipper found everything ready for him now. Men ashore made fast his lines, connected up his pipes, filled his tanks—all in good order. Sister destroyers were oiling up with him, and with tanks filled they all bumped their way back to moorings, again without sinking anything along the way.

It was then daylight, and right after breakfast they all had to report to the admiralty, so no use trying to sleep any more. Arrived at the admiralty, the officer in command complimented them on their safe run across, and then went on to say that of course they had had a trying passage, and naturally their ships, especially engines and boilers, would have to be overhauled—all very natural and proper—and of course the needful time for overhauling, and for officers and crew—two, three, four days, whatever it was—would be granted; but (they knew the need) the question was: How long before they would be ready to go to sea?

The young destroyer commanders had discussed that and other possibilities in the reception-room outside, so when the senior of the group looked from one to the other of his colleagues they had only to nod, for him to turn to the admiral and say:

"We are ready now, sir."

Which remark should become one of the historic remarks of this war.

At this time—at the gates to the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish coast—the U-boats were collecting frightful toll. In the Mediterranean they were running wild. Five ships from one convoy in one day—three of them big P. & O. liners—was one of their records in the Eastern Mediterranean.

To the natural question, Why haven't you checked them? almost any young British naval officer felt like saying: "Check 'em? Try it yourself and check 'em! You go out there and keep your ship zigzagging full speed night and day for three years and see how you like it! Go out there in rough weather and fog with not a minute's let-up, and see if you get to where the fall of a bucket of a dark night will make you jump three feet in the air or not! Our ships were not built, and our chaps were not trained, to beat their rotten game."

So things were when our fellows took hold, and hearing no word from them for a long time and then but a meagre one, it may be that many a citizen on this side was saying to himself:

"Well, they're gone, that little flotilla, swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic, and that is all we know about them. And now I wonder what they're doing over there? Are they doing great work or are they tied up to a dock at the naval base, and their officers and crews roistering ashore?"

I can say from several weeks' observation later that they were not doing too much roistering ashore. Before leaving this side I found no evidence that anybody in Washington wished to suppress the record of what that little fleet was doing. Secretary Daniels and Chairman Creel of the Committee on Public Information believed with me that our little fellows over there were doing things worth recording. This fact is set down here because many people last summer believed there was too much suppression of the news of our fighting forces; and suspicion of suppression breeds distrust. Our fellows perhaps were not doing well. If they were doing well, wouldn't we be told more?

But they have ideas of their own on these matters over on the other side, and it is the other side which has most to say of what shall or shall not be given out for publication. In a previous chapter I have reported the answer of the British admiral in charge to my request to be allowed to cruise on an American destroyer. The reply was a flat and immediate: "No." They did not allow British writers on British ships; why should they allow an American writer on an American ship?

It had to be explained that despite what they allowed or did not allow, English papers did publish praiseful items about the deeds of the British navy; and even if they did not publish such items, conditions governing publicity in the United States and the British Isles were not equal. The British navy was a tremendous one and it was operating just off their own shores; officers and men were regularly going ashore by the thousands and to their friends and families, if to nobody else, they talked of what was going on; and it does not take long for thousands of bluejackets to spread the gossip in a country where no spot in it is more than forty miles from tide-water, whereas our nearest Atlantic ports were three thousand miles from our base of operations in Europe, and it was another three thousand miles to our west coast.

It also had to be pumped into the admiralty over there that possibly the American and British publics did not hold to quite the same ideas about their respective navies. It was possible that the 110,000,000 people of the United States looked on our navy as not altogether the property of the officers and men in it; possibly our 110,000,000 people over here looked on the navy as their navy, that they had a right to know something of what it was doing; and so (this item had to be pointed out to one of our own topside officers, too) as that same public were paying the bills of the navy, no harm perhaps to let them in on a few things or, this being the twentieth century, they might take it into their heads some day to have no navy at all.

It took the foregoing talk and something more before I could get the permission of the British Admiralty to cruise on one of our own destroyers over there. This isn't so much a criticism of the British Admiralty as to show that their point of view differs from ours; and to show that it was not Washington which was holding up news of our navy over there.

As to what they have been doing! They have been doing great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been shelled for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under—one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took from a sinking liner 503 passengers without the loss of a life. One of these destroyers lashed herself to the sinking ship the more quickly to get them off; and as the liner went down our little ship had to use her emergency steam to get away in time. A fourth destroyer of ours got the U-boat which sank the liner. That was the record of one little group of destroyers in one day; and it is detailed here because the writer happened to be present when these things happened.

When our fellows first went over they had to learn a few things from the British. We had first to get rid of some childish ideas about depth charges. We brought over a toy size of 50 to 60 pounds. They showed us a man's size one—300 pounds of T N T, a contraption looking so much like a galvanized iron ash-barrel with flattened sides that they call them "ash-cans."

These ash-cans do not have actually to hit the U-boat; to explode one anywhere near is enough. When our fellows let go one of them, the ship has to be going 25 knots to be safe. One of our destroyers was making 11 knots one night—the best she could do under the weather conditions—and an ash-can was washed overboard by a heavy sea. Our destroyer's stern came so near to being blown off that her crew thought sure she was gone; she had to feel the rest of the way most carefully to port.

This U-boat hunting has been found so wearing on men's nerves that the British Admiralty has a law that our destroyers must remain in port after every cruise for periods that average about two-thirds of their time at sea. Once our destroyers are back to port and tied up to moorings, a U-boat might come up and sink a ship at the harbor entrance and our fellows not allowed to up-steam and at 'em. It was only after a hard experience against U-boats that they evolved this law to save men from breaking down.

It is a dangerous, hard service on one of the roughest coasts in the world—a coast where for seven months or so in the year wind and sea and strong cross tides seem to be their daily diet; a service where for days on a stretch it is nothing at all for destroyer crews not to be able to take a meal sitting down, not even in chairs lashed to stanchions and one arm free hooked around a stanchion; a service where officers live jammed up in the eyes of the ship and never think at sea of taking off their clothes, and where they sleep (when they do sleep) mostly by snatches on chart-house or ward-room transoms.

And for watches: eight hours in every twenty-four, night and day watching of their convoy, of their colleagues, of periscopes. (The prospect of collision with their close-packed convoy and themselves is a bad chance in itself.) On a destroyer convoying ships the officer of the deck has to stand with one eye to the compass ordering, say, two hundred changes of course in every hour. And one watch-officer of every destroyer has the extra job of acting as chief engineer of the ship; and when a watch-officer had to go aboard a torpedoed ship, or to go in the crow's nest in a critical time, to spend hours, it may be, the time so spent is in addition to his regular eight hours.

If he is the executive officer he must also act as navigator; and as it is important to know just where the ship is any moment of the day or night, the navigator does not figure on sleep in any long stretches. About twenty waking hours out of twenty-four is his portion. As for the skipper: Every single waking hour of his is a heavy strain. I went to sea with the commander of the alert, intense type. Most of them are of that type, but this one particularly so, with eyes, ears, nerves, and brain working always at full power. Three hours in twenty-four was a pretty good lay-off for him.

Lively? Our destroyers are about 11-1/2 times as long as they are wide; which does not mean that they cannot keep the sea. They can keep the sea. Put one of them stern-on to a 90-mile breeze and all the sea to go with it, give her 5 or 6 knots an hour head of steam, and she will stay there till the ocean is blown dry. But they are engined out of all proportion to their tonnage, with their great weight of machinery deep down; which means that they roll. Oh, but they do roll! Whoopo—down and back like that! Most any of them will make a complete roll inside of six seconds. Ours was a 5-1/4-second one. When she got to rolling right, she would snap a careless sailor overboard as quickly as you could snap a bug off the end of a whalebone cane. There is one over there which rolled 73 degrees—and came back.

Take one of them when she is hiking along at 20 knots, rolling from 45 to 50 degrees, and just about filling the whale-boat swinging to the skid deck davits as she rolls! See one dive and take a sea over her fo'c's'le head and smash in her chart-house bulkhead maybe! Their outer skin is only 3/16 of an inch thick. See that thin skin give to the sea like a lace fan to a breeze! Watch the deck crawl till sometimes the deck-plates buckle up into V-shaped ridges! See them with the seas sloshing up their low freeboard and over their narrow decks, so that men have to make use of a sort of trolley line to get about. A man is aft and has to go forward, say. He hooks onto a rope loop, the same hanging from a fore-and-aft taut steel line about seven feet above deck, and when her stern rises he lifts his feet and shoots and fetches up Bam!—up against the fo'c's'le break. He is forward and wants to go aft—he hooks onto the loop, waits for her bow to rise, lets himself go and there he is—back to her skid deck.

That sounds like rough work. Sometimes it gets rougher than that, and then you hear of the wireless operator who was held in his radio shack for forty hours. He got pretty hungry, but he preferred the hunger to coming out and being washed overboard.

But let a machinist's mate tell you in his own way of the night he was standing a fire-room watch—this with all due respect to the chart-house bulkhead, the trolley line, the buckling decks, and the radio operator who was confined—this night he was on watch in the fire-room. Was it rough? He thought so. When he looked down at his feet, there were the fire-room deck-plates folding in and out like a concertina.

Destroyer crews do not loaf overmuch around deck. They can't. They live below decks mostly, strapped in when it is rough to a stretch of canvas laced to four pieces of iron pipe, set on an angle down against the ship's sides, and called a bunk. Even strapped in so they are sometimes, when she has a good streak on, hove out into the passageways. It was a young doctor of the flotilla who said that, except for their broken arms and legs, his ship's crew were disgustingly healthy.

Our officers over there volunteer for this service, and for every one who went, there were a dozen who wanted to go. And there is a lot of difference between men who go to a duty because they are ordered to go, and men who go because they want to go. These officers and men—there is no beating them, except by blowing them off the face of the waters. And even then they are not always beaten. One of our destroyers was cut down one night by collision. (With so many ships being crowded into a small steaming area, collisions are sure to happen.) All hands had to take to the rafts in a hurry. It was about two in the morning, one of those summer nights in the North when the light comes early. They watched her going under. Her deck settled level with the sea, and as it did so a young irrepressible one sang out: "What do you say, fellows, to having a race around the old girl before she flops under?" Away they started, four or five gangs of them, paddling their life rafts with their hands around the sinking ship at two in the morning.

That is youth; and there is no beating youth. We have had stories of our soldiers singing a song that has become very popular since we entered the war. We have been told of them singing it under the most varying conditions: as they camped on the granite blocks of the Hoboken water-front; as they climbed over the gangways of ships bound across; debarking from ships in European ports; singing it from behind the drawn shades of coaches rolling across France. There were even those who sang it while waiting to step into the life-boats on a torpedoed troop-ship; but for light-hearted courage has any one beaten that destroyer lad who was torpedoed one night last winter?

When the torpedo struck his ship the two depth charges astern were exploded also. Two 300-pound charges of T N T they were. The little ship seemed to be lifted out of the water. There was just time to throw over a few life rafts and take a high dive after the rafts. There was no time to get an S O S message away before the ship went down; so there they were—a November night in northern waters, more than half their crew known to be dead, their ship sunk, no other ship near and no hope of one coming near. It was about as tough a case as men could be expected to face and hope to live. But there was a boy there—he was jouncing up and down in the water to keep warm, and jouncing up and down he was singing (from out of the dark they heard him), singing cheerfully:

"O boy, O boy, where do we go from here!"

It is the thing spoken of in the early part of this book. Material is a great thing; but personnel has it beaten a dozen ways. Paul Jones with his capable seagoers in his little sloop-of-war could raise the devil with the enemy. Paul Jones with a line of battleships and forty crews of men without spirit would not have caused them ten minutes' loss of sleep. That singing lad in northern waters was worth a dozen guns.

Our destroyers went over there at a time when the U-boats were sinking more tonnage in one month than Great Britain was building in four; and because of U-boat activities the loss of ships in the usual marine ways was far beyond normal. To the weary British our fellows brought a fresh vigor, a new aggressiveness.

Only half a dozen were in that first group, but other groups followed, and groups are still following. They have not driven the U-boats from under the seas, but they have made it possible for merchant ships to live in that part of the ocean they are covering.

Somebody has broken into print somewhere to say that Germany has trouble getting U-boat crews; that men have to be driven into U-boats to man them. What a queer idea of human courage people who say such things have! There are always volunteers, probably always will be—plenty of volunteers for any dangerous service. If the U-boat crews were the kind that have to be driven to sea, there would be no great harm in them. But they are not that kind. They have courage, and they have skill, and because they have courage and skill they are dangerous.

After a year of the U-boat drive England saw a danger of being some day starved out; and with England starved out, our army might as well have stayed on this side last summer; but though the drive is still on, England is not yet starved out, for much of which comfort they can thank the officers and men of our little destroyer flotilla.

At a time when England was worn and weary with the U-boat game, our fellows went over to hearten them up; and they are still heartening them up; and, besides heartening them up, they are getting the U-boats regularly. How many they are getting I could not say, even if I knew; but one of our vice-admirals has publicly stated that they once got five in one day. And with malice toward none, let us hope for more days like it.



THE MARINES HAVE LANDED——

It was a little girl at home, not old enough to read long words, but able to read a picture, as she put it; and there was a print of a company of marines leaving one of our navy-yards, and she said: "The marine soldiers going away—more trouble somewheres, isn't there, papa?"

Which caused her papa to recall that from where he was born and lived the first years of his life he had only to look out of his top window and across the harbor to see a big navy-yard; and while he was still too young to read a paper, he had seen marines boarding ships and marching off to trains; and just as sure as he did the older people would read from that night's or next morning's paper of trouble somewhere abroad.

And always they went without any fuss. Most of us would have more to say about going to the office of a snowy morning than do the marines on leaving for some far-away country, from where, as they know by past records of the corps, quite a few of them are never coming back. They were the original efficiency boys. They slung their rifles, hooked on their packs and went; and that ended that part of it.

But after they were gone people living near naval quarters waited for the next word; and that next word so often came in the form of one laconic sentence, the same cabled back by the topside naval officer or some American consul, that we used to wonder if they had a rubber stamp for it—that laconic, reassuring sentence! When our country erects a memorial structure to the United States Marine Corps, she should chisel over the main front:

The Marines Have Landed and Have the Situation Well in Hand

Landed in some tropic port with some hard-pronouncing name, they have, shoving off from the ship's side with their rifles and their packs, to get a toe-hold somewhere against two, five, ten times their number blazing away at them from behind sand-hills, or roof-tops, or a fine growth of jungle, it may be.

The others are not always as well equipped as our fellows and they may have no advance supply-base; but they know how to campaign. South of us are multitudes who will take a bag of corn, a water-bottle, and a pair of straw sandals and go shuffling over the hill trails for forty or fifty miles a day. And don't think they won't fight. They will. In countries where boys of twelve and thirteen pack a gun and go off with their fathers in the army, they probably do not worry overmuch about dying early.

From their retreats they like to sally forth at intervals and have a wallop at our fellows. There was a corporal in Haiti, on outpost, with half a dozen loyal natives acting as policemen with him. The native guards slept in barracks by themselves; our marine in a little low shack set up on posts a hundred yards away, with a native who acted as cook and general helper. The next outpost was six miles away.

A band of outlaws rushed the native police in their barracks at this post one night, and such as they did not shoot up they ran into the brush. Our corporal was awakened from sound slumber by the firing and shouting at the barracks. A few volleys through the sides of his own shack waked him up good. He pulled on his trousers, taking time to fasten them only by one button at his waist. There was no time for socks; he pulled on his shoes, but had no time to lace them. A marine is trained to be neat in his attire, and so our corporal apologetically explained later that he had got no farther than that in his dressing when he heard them trying to burst in his front door.

The corporal sent his native cook to the rear door, while he fixed his bayonet to his rifle and stood guard over the front door. They had it all but stove in when he began cutting loose like three men with his rifle through the door. He killed a man there.

They then began to smash in the window nearest the door. He pried open the window with his bayonet, and got there before them. There was a big black fellow at the broken window. Our marine shot him dead, which gave him time to turn to the side window, which they had now broken in with the butts of their rifles. He got one there. There was another close up whom he hit but did not kill; and he dropped another one on the edge of the shadows outside. The cook, catching the spirit of the thing, killed one at the rear door on his own account.

The bandits had enough, and left. Next evening, when his officer came along with a squad, he found our corporal with his wounded under guard, his four dead ones in a neat row, and himself and his cook frying chicken in the twilight, cheerfully able to report that he had the situation well in hand.

They are a sharpshooting rifle outfit. Down in Vera Cruz during the late trouble a platoon of marines were at the foot of a street leading up from the water-front. They had cleaned up things all about them and thought they were in for a rest; and they wanted their rest—a hot tropic day with the heat rolling off the asphalt where they lay.

There came a ping! of a rifle bullet among them; and half a minute or so later another ping! They watched, and up the street they saw the head, arm, and shoulder of a man with a rifle come poking around the corner of a building, and ping! another one, and this time one of their men hit. A bad hombre, that one.

"Get him!" said their officer, and named two of them to get him.

The two men lay down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb between the eyes.

It was good shooting; but there was no special comment after it. The talk would have come if they hadn't got him.

But it is not always a matter of fighting or shooting efficiency. There was that bad hombre, Juan Calcano of Santo Domingo—Juan the Terrible, the natives called him. Juan and his gang had a headquarters in the mountains. From there they came riding down into the valleys—shooting, robbing, standing quiet natives on their heads generally. Juan had quite a little territory under tribute. He came down into La Ramona, where was a custom-house and guard. He shot up the guards, took all the gold in the custom-house, and rode away, saying: "Come after me who dares!"

The marines did not worry about the daring part; but he was too strongly intrenched for a direct attack. Your professional soldier, above all men, prefers not to throw away good men's lives. They considered matters; and one day they set out, three marine officers and thirty men, for Juan's country. One of those tropical hurricanes came along the same day they started, blew down trees, filled rivers to over their banks, and made them wade waist-deep in the mud of the roads. It was tough going, but it had its good side—there were not many people abroad.

They arrived near the village where Juan was known to be. An American marine would not have stood much chance to get back if Juan had known one was around; but one of the officers rigged up as a mule trader and went looking for Juan. He found him, taking it easy until the roads after the storm should become passable, and allow himself and his men to sashay into the valley again.

All kinds of people—white, and black, and brown—came Juan's way to do business—to buy mules and horses, for instance. In the course of his travels in the valley Juan had helped himself to some very fine mules and horses. Along comes this man this day—American, English, French, Spanish, who knows? Or cares? He talked money—cash—for a good pair of mules. No old spavined creatures, but young, strong, sound ones.

Yes, Juan had just such a pair of mules. Oh, a superb young pair! He would see. Truly yes. Would the stranger senor come into his house so that Juan might speak more confidentially of them? The stranger would. And did. But before Juan could unload all he had to say about his mules the mule buyer drew a large service automatic and slipped Juan out to where thirty-two marines, officers and men, were in hiding. And they put Juan in jail, and all it cost was one mule—not Juan's—drowned while crossing a stream during the hurricane.

The marines have a great fighting record; but the marines do more than fight. After all, men cannot be handling rifle and bayonet every waking minute—they would become abnormal creatures if they did, of use only in war time; and it would be a terrible world if war were our end and aim. The marines get aviation, search-light, wireless, telegraphic, heliograph, and other signal drill. They plant mines, put up telegraph and telephone lines in the field, tear down or build up bridges, sling from a ship and set up or land guns as big as 5-inch for their advance base work.

It is a belief with marines that the corps can do anything. Right in New York City is a marine printing plant with a battery of linotypes and a row of presses. They set their own type, write their own stuff (even to the poetry), draw their own sketches, do their own photography, their own color work—everything. Every man in that plant is a marine, enlisted or commissioned. Every one has seen service somewhere outside his country.

One was in a tropic country one time after an all-night march to a river where the ferry was a water-soaked bamboo raft. They had to wait until some native might happen along with a bull—or it might be a cow—to tow the raft across. After crossing the river twice in that day, the young marine commander halted on the bank and said: "That's sure not crossing in a hurry if we had to. Might's well go to it and build a bridge right now."

They cut down trees, got a portable pile-driver from their transport, rigged it up and set to work. They hoisted the hammer—a good heavy one—and let it drop. Bam! she struck, and into the mud for about two feet went the pile. Fine! They hoisted the hammer again—four men hauling on pulley blocks did the hoisting—and let her go again. This time instead of a fine bam! the hammer went a fine splasho! into the river. The great heat and dampness of the place had warped the runways; almost every other time they let that hammer drop, it jumped the runways and into the river.

But that was all right. They could fish her out and hoist her up by man power again. It was when they left the solid bank and had to put out into the river that their troubles began. A pile-driver ought to have a pretty solid foundation. Ought to have! They took two dugout canoes, lashed them together, put a bamboo deck across, set their pile-driver on the deck and turned to again. It made a kind of a wabbly base; besides hauling the hammer out every time it jumped into the river, they had to see that it didn't come bouncing down atop of their own heads or through the canoe deck. However, they were getting action. They finished driving the piles and setting up the stringers.

For their bridge floor they laid down wood shingles, and over that a mat made out of woven bamboo strips. For a top deck? Well, it was a coral island and the roads of that country were of pounded coral; they put a top dressing of pounded coral across the bridge.

And then the young marine commander looked her over and figured on the dimensions of his struts and stringers, and said: "Some class! She'll stand a two-ton load." And then along came a steam-roller from off the transport, and the roller weighed five tons and it was important that it be passed across. "Go ahead," said the marine commander—"only I hope you can swim!" And they all camped on the bank to watch. The steam-roller man was an optimist and a literary person: "You may have builded better than you know, captain!" The bridge settled down another foot, but the roller got across, and back and over many more times; which set the younger marines to standing on the bank and saying: "That's us—bridge builders!"

The fight in the shack, the capture of Calcano, the sharpshooting at Vera Cruz, the building of that coral-floored bridge, are not set down here as wonderful stunts. They are set down because the writer happened to bump into them during a casual hour's inspection of their records. Scores of more heroic or ingenious samples could be served up by anybody who cared to dig deep into the records. These are detailed here, because they could be briefly told and at the same time show the marine's characteristic qualities: courage, ingenuity, technic, and industry.

Here we might mention that it is not in itself an act of war to land marines on foreign soil. It was sending ashore the bluejackets at Vera Cruz that made it an act of war. To protect American lives and property in Nicaragua a battalion of marines landed there a few years ago. They had some sharp fighting, but it was not an act of war. Do you begin to see him as a diplomatic asset? And perhaps why all this landing action comes his way? Most of us have probably forgotten the details of that Nicaraguan landing; but—unless they have been jacked out lately—a company of those marines are still there, looking out for American interests. Only a company, but still hanging on.

Courage, ingenuity, industry—they need them all. Most of us will probably have to stop to remember that the marines who landed in Haiti and Santo Domingo are still there. And running things in their usual efficient fashion. There was the usual fighting to get a toe-hold, the usual fighting to retain place, the usual establishing of outposts, with the usual killed and wounded already probably forgotten by most of us. Perhaps they are too far away to make absorbing newspaper items; perhaps it is the Big War overshadowing all else.

In Haiti and Santo Domingo it was the old story of political factions, each faction having its own little gang of fighting men till our fellows came in and ran most of them into the hills. When the marines took charge they found that pretty much everything on the island had gone to wrack. As, for instance, under the old French regime there had been some splendid roads in Haiti, but now they were hardly more than sewers in the towns and a drainage for the hill slopes of the country.

The marines repaired the roads; not always using the picks and shovels themselves, but seeing to it that somebody did, paying a living wage for such work to the natives. Sometimes bandits—who are quite often gentle creatures when out of training—captured bandits were allowed to quit jail to do useful work in this line. The marines installed sanitary methods, saw that courts of justice were resumed, marine officers themselves serving as justices until they found natives who could do that service. Likewise they collected and disbursed taxes.

Above all, they did away with the old reign of terror, when no man's life was safe if he happened to be on the wrong side. When the bandits were running around unchecked, it was not safe for a whole family to go to market together. Generally the women went to sell their little produce, while the men stayed behind to guard the little property at home. Now—the natives speak of the wonder of it—the roads on market-days are crowded with both men and women.

At first they had distrust of the marine; not altogether because he was a foreigner (the tropical people probably are less distrustful of us than we of them)—he was an armed soldier. But they learned to know him, and now the native salutes and smiles without effort at the marine in passing. When one particular marine officer left there to come home recently, crowds of native men, women, and children came down, some to weep, but all to wish him Godspeed in going.

The marine is sometimes termed soldier and sailor too, which is not correct. He is not a sailor and does not claim to be. When not in barracks ashore he lives aboard some war-ship afloat; and on shipboard he does certain guard work and handles the secondary batteries. But he does not have to sailorize; the bluejacket takes care of that part, and takes care of it well. The notion that a marine must qualify as a sailor aboard ship has probably cost the corps many a prospective recruit.

To call him a seagoing soldier is more nearly correct. When it is not an act of war to land marines on foreign soil, it is good business to keep them where landings can be quickly made with them. So his being kept aboard ship, perhaps. Bluejackets have taken part in landing-parties, too, but it is not to black the bluejacket's eye to say that it is not his regular job. The bluejacket's work is aboard ship—on the bridge, in magazines, in turrets, below decks. Advance shore work is the marine's specialty, and he goes to it pretty much as a man with a dinner-pail goes to work in the subway.

He is the first to land, the last to leave, and to name the places where he has seen service—well, one of them wrote a song once.

"From the hills of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," it began. But he has seen more than Mexico or the Mediterranean since. He could now say:

"From the hills of Montezuma to the gates of old Peking He has heard the shrapnel bursting, he has heard the Mauser's ping! He has known Alaskan waters and the coral roads of Guam, He has——"

But it's like calling a roll—Egypt, Algeria, Tripoli, Abyssinia, Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Cuba, Porto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Alaska, the Philippines, Formosa, Sumatra, Hawaii, Samoa, Guam—like calling the roll of tropic countries and a few less warm to say where he has been.

He has been most everywhere, done most everything. Did you ever see any mounted marines? There is a guard of mounted marines right now with the legation in Peking; and once a platoon of marines, on duty in Africa, not being able to get big enough horses, rode camels through the wilds of Abyssinia to the palace of old Menelik.

In speaking here of the marines, no man or officer has been named. That is done of a purpose. In talking of the corps, from the topsiders down—generals, colonels, majors, captains lieutenants, and enlisted men—one fact stuck out: They all played up the corps. All individuals—officers and men—were made subordinate to the corps. So here, taking the tip, no names are named. A soldier speaks of his regiment, a bluejacket of his ship. The Marine Corps is made up of companies, regiments, battalions, divisions; but it is the corps of which the marine always speaks.

If you ask the members of any other outfit to name the model military unit, they may name their own branch of the service first; but if they do, it is almost a sure bet that they will name the United States Marine Corps next. When they do not name themselves first, they name the marines first. And this does not apply to outfits in this country alone.

By the look of things now, there probably will be plenty of war before we are done. If any young fellow is wishful to be in the middle of it, we would say: Consider the marines. You may not see them mentioned every morning in the press reports, but be sure of this—they are there and on the job.



THE NAVY AS A CAREER

A young fellow reading all this stuff about the doings of our destroyers might be inclined to look on the navy as pure adventure, which would not be to get it quite right. The adventure is there, but there is something more.

The navy will take a young man, feed and clothe him, give him a good all-round training, and while he is yet in middle age retire him with at least $60 a month for the rest of his life. No matter how low his rating has been, that $60 a month is certain after his thirty years of service; while, if he has shown moderate intelligence and ambition, he can count on close to $100 a month, and this without his having ever been a commissioned officer. The years after his retirement he may spend as he pleases—go into business, get another job, and make another wage on top of his pension. He can go to jail if he prefers: whatever he does, always there is that sheet-anchor of a pension to windward.

Apart from the fighting end of it, most of us possibly do not know just what navy life means to-day. We all know that man-of-war's men no longer lie out on rolling yard arms to reef salt-crusted sails in gales of wind; but in what else lies the difference? Some of us, possibly, do not know that.

The navy still wants men with the seagoing instinct—men who can sailorize, who can hand, splice, and steer; but more than ever the navy is looking for men who can do other things. The navy wants ship-fitters, blacksmiths, plumbers, electricians, wireless operators, carpenters, boiler-makers, painters, printers, store-keepers, bakers, cooks, stewards, drug clerks; even as it wants gunners, boatmen, quartermasters, sailmakers, firemen, oilers, and it will take clarinet, trombone, and cornet players and the like for the ship's band.

If a man has no trade the navy will teach him one. There are navy schools for electricians, shipwrights, ship-fitters, carpenters, painters, coppersmiths, ship's cooks, bakers, stewards, and musicians. There are schools where yeomen (ship's clerks) are taught all about departmental papers; there is a Hospital Corps school; an aeronautic school; a school for deep-sea diving. (There are no schools for blacksmiths or boiler-makers; these must have mastered their trades before enlistment.)

When a young fellow enlists he is sent to one of several naval training-stations. Here they are quartered in barracks—well-aired, well-lighted, well-heated buildings. At one place, where the climate is mild, the boys sleep in barracks in bungalows with upper sides of canvas, which are rolled down to let in sun and air in fine weather and laced up against bad weather.

At all training-stations there are mess-halls, reading-rooms, libraries; also gymnasiums, athletic fields, and ball parks. At all stations there are setting-up drills, gymnastic, swimming and signal exercises, ship and boat training. The men go on hikes, fight sham battles, dig trenches. Line-officers give them advice which will be of use to them on shipboard later; service doctors and chaplains hand them hygienic and moral truths that will be of use to them anywhere at any time.

A recruit goes from the training-school to a cruising ship, where he may find himself—according to his work—doing watch duty four hours on to eight hours off; or working at hours like a man ashore—turning to at eight or nine o'clock and knocking off at four or five or six o'clock in the afternoon.

War-ships formerly meant close living quarters; and ships formerly went off on cruises on which the men sometimes did not set foot on shore for six months or a year, and quite often they had to go for months without taste of fresh meat or vegetables. Those days are gone. Ships still make long cruises from home, but they do not keep the sea as they used to. Service regulations require that men now be given a run ashore once in three months; and "beef boats" travel with all fleets.

The everlasting holystoning of wooden decks and the dim lanterns hung at intervals from low-hanging beams—they are gone. The only dim lanterns now are the "battle-lanterns" in use at night war practice; and they are swung to steel bulkheads by electric wires. Quarter-decks, forecastle heads, and bridges are still planked on the big ships, and such do still have to be holystoned on special days; but the great stretches between decks are now laid in linoleum on the hard steel itself; electric lights are all over the ship, and, as for the low beams, the new big ships are so high-girdered that hammock-hooks on the berth-deck have to be made extra long so the men won't have to get stepladders to turn in. A battleship nowadays is about 600 feet long, 100 feet wide, has seven or eight decks, with turrets, bridges, military masts, and smoke-pipes topside. Between decks are magazines, storerooms, engine-rooms, boiler-rooms, dynamo-rooms, mess-rooms, ice-rooms, repair-shops, staterooms, office-rooms, sick-bays, galleys, laundries, pantries—but only ship-constructors can tell you offhand how many hundreds of compartments are below decks of a present-day big war-ship.

She is a great workshop, an office-structure, a big power-plant, a floating hotel—and a few other things. But above all she is meant to be a home for ten or twelve hundred officers and men.

A man may not be given duty on a battleship or battle cruiser; he may be sent to a scout cruiser or a beef boat or a gunboat, which, being smaller, will bounce and roll around more in heavy weather and not offer so much room to move around in; but he will get used to the bouncing around, and always he will find some variety and some comfort in his daily life.

That item of comfort might as well be counted in as important. It is something to know that, no matter what else happens, there are hot meals waiting a man three times a day, and a dry change of clothing, and a dry hammock to turn into nights. Even on deck duty in bad weather a man can get into slicker, rubber boots, and rain-hat, and at the worst be almost comfortable.

Navy life is not meant to be a perpetual entertainment—not though they do hold regular smokers on the quarter-decks of the big ships. To lie for months off a tropic port waiting for something to happen—that is not exhilarating; and coaling ship, even with the band playing—that is no joy. But the watching of tropic ports passes; and the ship has to steam many a mile before she must be coaled again. So, taking it in the long perspective, it is a moderately varied life, an outdoor life, and under hygienic conditions of the best. Right now, war with us, there is going to be some danger; but we are assuming that any man who thinks of joining the navy is prepared for a little danger.

A man may enlist in the navy up to thirty-five years of age, provided he is at least 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 128 pounds, has a 33-inch chest, possesses normal vision, a moderate number of sound teeth, is free from disease or deformity, and is an American citizen. Sometimes men shy on some measurement are passed if above average otherwise. A boy seventeen (the youngest enlistment age) must be 5 feet 2 inches and weigh 110 pounds. When a boy or a man enlists he goes at once on the payroll. With his pay goes a clothing allowance sufficient to cover all service demands; with his pay also goes nourishing and abundant food.

Enlistments are of four years for men. A boy's enlistment runs to his majority. A man may work up to be a C. P. O. (chief petty officer) in his first enlistment. The navy is full of men who have done that. During this war many a recruit should make his C. P. O. quickly, for there is nothing in the Regulations to prevent a recruit from making his C. P. O. overnight. The habit of most officers is to rate up good men in their divisions as fast as vacancies will permit.

A C. P. O.'s base pay may run up to $77 a month. With re-enlistment that base pay is increased. A man re-enlisting without delay gets a bounty of four months' pay. (Figure that extra re-enlistment money—four months' pay every four years, the same with interest at the navy savings-account rate of 4 per cent—and see what it amounts to after thirty years' service.) That extra re-enlistment money is not figured into the pension probabilities, as stated in the beginning of this article. Consider that and then consider how many men have to work until they are too old to work any further and who, after all their years of labor, go on the scrap-heap without a dollar against the poverty of their old age.

Besides the base pay of a man's rating there is extra money for men doing special work. (Neither has this been reckoned in the pension possibilities.) Certain gun-pointers, gun-captains, coxswains, stewards, and cooks get extra money up to $10 a month. Men in submarines get $1 extra for every day their boat submerges up to $15 a month. Men acting as mail-clerks draw up to $30 a month extra; ship's tailors up to $20 a month extra. Men in the Flying Corps get 50 per cent more than the base pay their rating calls for. Every man in the service draws a small extra sum for good conduct.

A chief petty officer is not the highest rating of the enlisted service. There is a most efficient body of men called warrant-officers, who wear a sword, are called "Mr.," and draw up to $2,400 a year. There are warrant boatswains, gunners, machinists, carpenters, pharmacists, and pay-clerks. But they must remain in service, even as most commissioned officers, till they are sixty-four, before they draw their pension of three-quarters pay. Also, like commissioned officers, they get no clothing allowance and have to pay for their food.

The matter of becoming a commissioned officer may interest the recruit. One hundred appointments may be made to Annapolis every year from among the younger enlisted men of the navy. Young fellows who wish to try for this are given special opportunities for study. The proviso that an applicant must be under twenty years of age and have been at least one year in service to make Annapolis is going to bar the way to some. For such there is another way—warrant. A warrant boatswain, gunner, or machinist of four years' standing and still under thirty-five years of age may take an examination for ensign. Twelve warrant-officers may be made ensigns annually. If they pass, they thereafter go on up exactly as any Annapolis graduate. A warrant pay-clerk may go up to be junior paymaster, where he will rank with an ensign.

The foregoing is for the business or ambitious side. Somebody may ask: Will the young fellow who looks on the navy as a business proposition make a good fighting man?

Well, in the judgment of men who study the game, almost any young fellow you meet along the street has it in him to make a good fighting man. The fighting habit is more a habit of mind than of body. Habituating the mind to the fighting game is what makes our sailors, soldiers, and marines do the right thing almost automatically in crises; and this almost automatically correct action makes for the greater safety of shipmates or comrades in time of peril.

In this book only the work of our destroyers in this war has been spoken of. That is because only our destroyers have come in contact with enemy ships; but all along the line the personnel is of equal caliber.

Our navy is crowded with men who will face any danger. Some years ago one of our battleships was on the battle-range, with bags of powder stowed in her turrets to save time in loading and firing the guns. A spark got to the bags of powder. There was an explosion and a fire. Directly underneath was the handling-room. Burning pieces of cloth fell from the turret down into the handling-room. The crew of that handling-room could have jumped into the passageway, made their way up a ladder, and so on to the free and safe air of the open deck. What they did was to stand by to stamp out what fire they could.

Leading from the handling-room were the magazines. The doors of the magazines were open. Men jumped into the magazines and buttoned the keys of the bulkhead doors so that there would be no crevice for sparks. In doing that they locked themselves in; and once in they had to stay in. Above them, they knew, was a turret full of men and officers dead and dying; they knew that fire was raging around them, too, and that the next thing would be for the people outside to flood the magazines. The magazines were flooded; when things were under control and the doors opened, the water in the magazines was up to the men's necks.

While that was going on below decks, in the turret were other men and officers, including the chaplain, not knowing what was going on below, and expecting every moment to be blown up into the sky; but there they were, easing the last moments of the men who were not already dead. Thirty all told were killed in the turret. All concerned behaved well, but no better than they were expected to behave.

A few years ago there was a destroyer off Hatteras. It was before daybreak of a winter's morning in heavy weather. A boiler explosion blew out her side from well below the water-line clear up through to her main deck. Men were killed by the explosion; others were badly scalded. A steam burn is an agonizing thing, yet some of these scalded men went back into that hell of a boiler-room and hauled out shipmates who, to their notion, were more badly burned than themselves. One such rescuer died of his burns. The hole in the deck and top side of that destroyer was twelve feet across, yet her commander and crew got her to Norfolk under her own steam. Commander and crew behaved well, but no better than they were expected to behave.

There is a chief boatswain in the navy who had the duty of taking a ship's steamer with a crew to look after the ship's target at battle practice. A target is a frame of canvas set up on a raft of logs. The duty of the steamer was to stand off to one side and make a record of the hits.

This boatswain likes to joke, to try out new men. On the run from the ship he called the roll and said: "Now, boys, in this work one of you will have to stay on the raft to count the hits. Of course it is dangerous work. I won't say that it isn't. The man going may not come back. The chances are"—he eyed them one after another—"that whoever goes will never come off the raft alive. Now, I can name the one who will have to do that work. But I don't want to have to name him. I'll let you draw lots."

He took a sheet of paper and cut it into strips. His crew—all apprentice boys, all fresh from the training-school—drew the slips. The lad who drew the short slip was no better or braver to look at than most of the others. He looked at his slip of paper and then in a sort of wonder at the sea and sky.

He came back to his short slip. His lips trembled. He prayed to himself. Then he went down into his blouse pocket and fished out a stub of a pencil. He was whiter than ever, and shaking. "Can I have a sheet of paper, sir?"

"What do you want a sheet of paper for?"

"I'd like, sir, to write a note to my mother before I go."

To pick out a few isolated instances from service records and shout: "There is the proof of general efficiency, of courage, of—" whatnot—that would be idle. These were not taken from the service records. Officers and men in the turret explosion, in the destroyer accident, in the raft incident, are mentioned here because the writer, at different times, has cruised with them.

They all behaved well; but no better than they were expected to.

When I asked the boatswain in the raft case if he expected the boy to quit, he said: "Quit! They never quit."

This talk of heroism and pensions in the same breath may not seem to jibe; somebody is going to wonder if the man who thinks of the money side of the navy in the beginning isn't going to think too much of it in the end. But there is a point of view which should be reckoned with, and a type of man, of a good fighting man, who should be listened to in this matter. Why should not a man who risks his life in his daily calling have the normal comforts and his family the ordinary necessities of life?

I know a fireman, an efficient, brave man—a man with a record. One night—we were in a drug store in a crowded city—he was answering the argument of a man working in a big factory.

Said the fireman: "You're making your five or six—yes, and eight—dollars a day, in lively times like now. All right. But the lively times will pass, and there'll come weeks when you won't make any four or five or six dollars a day, and there'll come weeks when you'll be on half-time. Average it up and you won't get any more than I will in the long run. And when I'm through, when I'm fifty-five, I get a pension, and with a few good years left to me. And where are you then? Out on the street or some home for the aged—if they will take you.

"Save money as I go along? I don't figure on it—not with a family and trying to give them the kind of food they need and the little things that live boys and girls—especially girls—care as much for as the grub they eat and the clothes they wear. But if I do spend all my pay, my family are getting the good of it, I don't go into the discard at the end. And when I'm up on a shaky roof in a bad fire, maybe I'll be more ready to take a chance, knowing that if I go through and cripple myself, there's something coming to the wife and family after it."

The fireman's argument holds for the navy, except that in the navy they get through younger and with a bigger pension.

Is there any romance in the navy nowadays? Who can answer for all? Probably as much now as ever there was. Why should substituting smoke-pipes for spars, and propellers for sails, kill the thing that thrills us? I've seen men washing down decks of a tropic morning, and, ninety miles inland, old Orizaba showing his white head above the clouds; and some of those men thought it was slow work and others thought it was great.

On a scout cruiser to African ports, or a thousand miles up a Chinese river on a gunboat, among the South Sea Islands on a light cruiser, some men return with dumb lips and others can keep you awake till morning with the tales of what they've seen.

A nineteen-year-old big-gun pointer sits atop of his bicycle saddle, and the enemy fleet is swinging into range. Will it be like shooting clay pipes in a gallery or will a warmer wave go rolling through his veins as he presses the button?

Romance! Is it something always dead and gone, or something a man carries around with him?

Whatever it is, the navy is there to try it out, and no danger of starving while we try it.



THE SEA BABIES

Submarines have been cutting a large figure in this war. There is probably a general curiosity to know how they are operated. I know I was curious to know, and, Collier's having secured me permission from the Electric Boat Company, I went over to Cape Cod to take in a trial trip or two of some boats they were building for the British Government.

There was one all ready for sea.

Long and narrow, and modelled like a stretched-out egg she was, with one end of the egg running to a point by way of a stern, and the other flattened to an up-and-down wedge-like bow. A heavy black line marked her run.

Below her run she was tinted to the pale green of inshore waters, and to a grayish blue above. Everything above her deck, which was only a raised fore-and-aft platform for the crew to walk on, with countless little round scupper-holes in its sides—above the deck her conning-tower, and above that again her periscope casing—all were blue-gray.

The feeling of the morning was of heavy wind and rain or snow to come; and a hard, cold breath of the sea and a taste of the rain were already on us as we crossed the plank from the mother ship to the deck of the "sub" and, one after the other, fitted ourselves into the main hatchway and wiggled down into her.

Our submarine, from the inside, was an amazing collection of engines, tanks, gauges, tubes, pipes, valves, wheels, torpedoes, tube heads, electric registers, electric lights, and whatnot. A flat steel floor ran from the forward end to the engine-room aft. Between the floor and the arched deck overhead were three heavy steel bulkheads with heavy steel doors. A narrow iron skeleton ladder led up to her conning-tower; small steel rungs bolted to the casing showed the way to a square after-deck hatch.

When all the others of us were below, the captain came squeezing down from the conning-tower hatch and took his position at the periscope.

To the captain's left stood a man whose job it was to hold the sub to the depth of water desired. This was the diving-rudder man, a most expert one, we were told, who had been known to hold a submerged sub at full speed to within six inches of one depth for two miles at a stretch. A thin brass scale and a curved tube of colored water with an air bubble in it helped out the diving-rudder man's calculations. The least deviation of the sub's course from the horizontal and these two instruments, lit up by electric lamps, showed it at once. There was a big dial, with a long green hand, which also marked the depth of the sub; but that was an insensitive and rather slow-acting gauge—all right for the crew to look at from half the length of the sub, but not fine or quick enough for the diving-rudder man.

He was the busy man while we were under water. The others could now and again grab a moment of relaxation from their tenseness, but while the sub was moving the diving-rudder man never took his eyes off the little brass scale with the electric light playing on it. Stop and consider that our sub had only to get a downward inclination of ever so little while running hooked-up under water, and in no time she would be below her lowest safety depth of 200 feet, where the pressure is 7 tons to every square foot of her hull. And should she collapse there would be no preliminary small leak by way of warning. She would go as an egg-shell goes when you crush it in your palm. Plack!—like that—and it would be all over. Above this same middle compartment, the smallest and most crowded of all, up through the grilled spaces of a steel grating, we could see the wide feet and boot-legs of the man who held the ship to her compass course; and for a wheel, we knew, he was holding a little metal lever about as long and thick as his middle finger, with a little black ball about as big as the ball of his thumb on the end of it.

To the right of the foot of the conning-tower ladder stood the ballast-tank man; and when the captain from the foot of his periscope gave the word—after first looking forward, aft, and to each side of him to see that all hands were at their proper stations—it was the ballast-tank man who went violently at once into action. He grabbed a big valve and gave it a twist; grabbed another and gave it a twist; and another, and one more; and, standing near by, we could hear—or thought we could—the in-rush of great waters.



A man got to wondering then what would happen if this chap got his valves mixed. But a look around showed every lever and every valve, everything marked with its own name and number. Nothing was left unmarked—in deep-cut black lettering on brass plates generally, but here and there colored-light signs, too. After another look at the multiplicity of them, almost any man would agree that it is a good scheme.

But to get back: the tank man has done his part and our sub is sinking. There is no unusual feeling to inform a man she is sinking. Only for the starting of the engines, the diving-rudder man getting busy, and the wide-faced gauge's long green finger beginning to walk around, a man who didn't know could easily believe that the sub was still tied up alongside her supply-ship. But the long green finger is walking, and marking 5 feet, 10 feet, 11, 12, as it walks. At 16 feet the finger oscillates and stops, and to that depth our diving-rudder man holds her while she speeds on for a mile or so.

That first little dash is by way of warming her up. The officer for whose government this submarine was built is aboard. He now asks for a torpedo demonstration. So two 1,500-pound dummy torpedoes are got ready, the breeches to two of the four forward tubes opened, the torpedoes slipped in, the breeches closed. The bow caps are then opened.

The captain, during all this time, has never left the periscope, which—to have it explained and over with—is no more than a long telescope set on end, with a reflecting mirror top and bottom. From the lower end of the periscope project two brass arms, by means of which the skipper now swings the periscope all the way around. In this way he is able to look at any quarter of the sea he pleases.

Running at the depth we were then, the periscope showing about six feet out of water, the captain at the periscope was, of course, the only man who could see anything outside of her.

The captain gave the needful preliminary orders; and at the proper time, sighting through the periscope as he did so, he pressed the button of a little arrangement which he held, half concealed, in the palm of his hand. There was a soft explosion, a sort of woof!—and a torpedo was on the way to a hypothetical enemy, with only the captain able to see that it reached its mark.

As the torpedo left the sub the rudder man gave her a "down" rudder, which was to offset the tendency of the sub to shoot her nose to the surface; when the torpedo had gone the tank man turned on the air-pressure, which blew out what water had entered the torpedo chamber. By and by the other torpedo was fired.

One reason for this trial run was to prove that she could run so many miles an hour under water by the power of her storage-batteries alone. And soon she went at that. And no mild racket inside her then; for a sub's engine power and space are out of all proportion to her tonnage. Not to decrease the noise, the man to whom the trial meant most was standing by with a stop-watch, and every half-minute or so he would yell at the top of his lungs, "Go!" or "Hold!" to the engineer, who was imprisoned in a narrow alleyway with engines to right and to left and below him. The engineer would look at a register and yell back at the manager, who would then set some figures in a book and rush over to the man who was reckoning up the decreasing or increasing amperes or kilowatts or whatever they were of her storage-batteries, and set down more figures; and if the boss had to yell his head off to make himself heard, be sure that the others had to yell even louder. Only on trial trips, probably, where tests have to be proved, does all this yelling happen; but the total effect was to make a shore-goer feel, not as if he were in a ship under water, but rather in a subway section under construction, or some overdriven corner of some sort of night-working machine-shop, or some other homelike place ashore. The bright electric lights helped out the machine-shop illusion.

For a time during the run the diving-rudder man had his troubles keeping her on a level, whereupon the skipper—an easy-going man ordinarily—jerked his head away from his periscope and had a peek for the reason. Through the forward bulkhead door he spied the torpedo man, who, feeling pleased, perhaps, at the successful execution of his part of the programme, was fox-trotting fore and aft for himself in his section of the ship. "Would you mind picking out one spot and staying on it?" asked the skipper, at which the torpedo man took his camp-stool, picked out his one spot, and planted himself on it, and piously read the stock-market quotations of a week-old newspaper for the rest of the run.

While this hour run—full speed, submerged—was in progress, a tickling in our throats set most of us to coughing. A naval constructor of note, who was also a shark on chemistry, explained how this coughing was not caused by the chill in the air, but by the particles of sulphuric acid thrown off by the action of the storage-batteries. These little particles, it seems, went travelling about in the air seeking a home—some place, any place where they could tuck in out of the way; but all the air homes being already occupied by other tenants—the usual ingredients or components of the air—they could find no place to butt in; and so they went around and about till innocent people like ourselves made a home for them by breathing them in out of the way. After which explanation—yelled above all the other noises—these sulphuric hoboes caused less suspicion and discomfort. It was good to hear that what we were swallowing was not the chlorine of a hundred stories of fiction.

The sub had now to prove her diving qualities. So tanks were blown out and up she went to the surface again; and there, while she was resting like a bird on the water, ballast-tanks were suddenly filled and down she went. Down, down, down she went—the long green finger on the broad-faced gauge walking around at a fine clip. Dropping so—on an even keel, by the way—she gave out no sense of action such as a man gets on an aeroplane. Flying around in the air, you see what's doing every second. If anything happens, you know you will see it coming, and—perhaps—going: your eyes, ears, brains, and nerves prove things to you.

But action in a submarine lies largely in a man's imagination, unless he be the periscope man; and even there, when she is completely submerged, he sees no more than the others. However, a man did not need to have too much imagination to think of a few things as he looked at the long green finger walking around: 30 feet, 40 feet, 50 feet—This particular observer had no idea she could drop so fast; and as she dropped, he could not help wondering how deep the ocean was around there—this in case anything happened. Sixty feet, 70 feet—she was gathering great speed by then, but at 82 feet she stopped—a pleasant thing to see. And then, maybe to show it was no accident, she did it all over again. Did we feel any difficulty in breathing during all this? We did not, nor during the three to four hours we were under that morning. And let a man listen to these submarine enthusiasts telling how they can live three or four weeks on their compressed air, if they have to, without coming to the surface! Only give them food enough, of course. And coffee—they have an electric range to make the coffee. As it happened, they made coffee for us—not that day, but next morning going home. It was good coffee. The 82-foot-drop stunts were done with each of the crew at his station, ready at any instant to check her.

To meet the further requirements our sub had to rise to the top, fill her tanks, let herself go, and then, by an automatic safety device, fetch up all by herself. So the tank man applied the air-pressure, blew his tanks free of all water, closed his outer valves and brought her up. She was now stretched out on the surface—not quite motionless, for the first of the breeze predicted the night before was on and we could feel that she was rolling a little. A peek through the periscope while she was up disclosed further evidence of the breeze—tossing white crests, two coasters hustling for harbor under short sail, an inbound fisherman with reefed mainsail making great leaps for home. Looking through the periscope so, it was easy enough to understand the feeling of power which might well come to the master of a submarine in war time. The sub can be lying there—in dark or bright water will make no difference; on such a day no eye is going to discern the white bone of the moving periscope; and he can be standing there, with a quick peek now and then to see what is going on above him; and by and by she can come swinging along majestically in her arrogance and power—the greatest battleship afloat, with guns to level a great city, or the biggest and speediest ship ever built—and he can be there and when he gets good and ready—Woof! she's gone. War-ship or liner, she's gone and all aboard gone with her; and the submarine skipper can go along about his business of getting the next one.

However, the automatic device was set for action at the required depth and the word given.

In this same middle compartment—the operating compartment of the ship—was a man with the spiritual face of one who keeps lonely, intense vigils. He sat on a camp-stool, and his business seemed to be not ever to let his rapt gaze wander from several rows of gauges which were screwed to the bulkhead before him. Since I first stepped down into the sub I had spotted him, and had been wondering if his ascetic look was born with him or was a development of his job—whatever his job might be. Now I learned what his job was. He was the man who stood by the automatic safety devices. If anything happened to the regular gadgets and it was life or death to get her at once to the surface, he was the man who pressed a button, or moved a switch, or in some highly mechanical way applied the mysterious power which would get her safe to the surface.

The skipper gave the word, the main ballast lad opened his outer valves, and down she started. We knew this, as always, by the moving green finger on the wide-faced gauge. Downward she kept on going, and to a man not too long shipmates with the creature she certainly did seem to be going down in a hurry. She was nearing the appointed depth; she made the appointed depth, and—went on by. "What's this!" said one observer to himself, and directed an interested eye toward the saint-like lad on the camp-stool.

But it was only for a few feet. The indicator slacked up, fluttered, stopped dead. And then—without the husky tank boy to lift a finger—we heard the rumph-h and rumbling of the valve-seats as the sea-water was driven out of her ballast-tanks; and then up she started. Soon there she was—did it all by herself—atop of the water. And the face of the young fellow of the automatic devices was like the face of the devout missionary who has just put something over on the heathen.

Later, when you express the feeling of almost holy comfort which these little automatic safety devices give you, the manager—the same with the stop-watch and the note-book—says, "Puh! Look here," and sits down and details—drawing good working plans of them on a pad while he talks—three different ways by which a submarine crew can beat the game should any evil happen to the ordinary and regular means of getting to the surface.

She has a turn at porpoising then; that is from a moderate depth the diving-rudder man shoots her near enough to the surface for the captain to have a look through the periscope—a long-enough look to plot the enemy on a chart, but not long enough to give that enemy much of a chance to pick him up; and then under again. And then up for another peek; and quickly under again, the captain at the periscope taking each time a fresh bearing of the enemy, who is supposed to be at some distance and steaming at good speed. After two or three such quick sights, changing course after each sight, it will be time to discharge a torpedo or two at her. And—the layman may note it—with expert men at the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge her torpedo, and dive—all within five seconds.

Steaming back to harbor after our trial run that day, we caught the first rip of the gale which the gummed-over moon and the low barometer had forecast the night before. It was too rough to tie her up to the supply-ship, so the sub was anchored—they carry anchors too—a short distance away, with three men left on her for an anchor watch, the idea being to take them off later for a hot meal. But after the rest of us were safe and warm and well fed aboard the mother ship, the increasing winds came bowling over the increasing seas, and the crew of the sub had to wait.

At intervals we could hear them emitting beseeching, doleful, disgusted moans and shrieks and howls from her air-whistle. But it was too rough for any little choo-choo boat to be battling around. It was 9.30 that night before they could safely be taken off. They were a moderately good-natured lot; but that was the blear-eyed trouble with making sub trial trips with bad weather coming on—a man never knew about his regular meals.

The supply-ship was quite a little institution herself. Approaching her from shore the night before, her lights beneath the dull moon and thin, drifting clouds had loomed up like a dancing-hall across the lonesome harbor waters. When we got aboard, we found her the relic of what had once been a fine block of a three-masted coaster; but moored forward and aft she was now, as if for all time, and no longer showing stout spars and weather-beaten canvas—nothing but two floors of white-painted boarding above her old bulwarks.

She was a boarding-place, a sort of club, for the crew and attendants, as well as a supply station for the submarines which in these New England waters were being tried out for one of the warring Powers. Voices and cigar-smoke as we stepped aboard, and more or less quiet breathing, with partly closed and open living and sleeping rooms, denoted that men were discussing, arguing, sleeping, and otherwise passing a normal evening. Looking farther, we saw that down in the insides of her—where formerly she stowed noble freights of coal or lumber or, sometimes, hay and ice—were now a boiler and engine room, and a good, big repair-shop.

This night, while the gale came howling and the sea rolling and the solid rain sweeping against the sober old sides of our supply-ship—on this night, the finest kind to be sitting in a warm cabin, we sat and, while the smoke rolled high, aired our views of the real things in the world; and the most real thing in the world just then being a submarine, we got this:

"Danger? Of course, there's some danger. So is there danger in bank-fishing, in log-jamming down in Maine, in mining deep down, and in aeroplaning.

"You want to get a sub right. A sub is a ship modelled different from most ships, of course, and built stronger to stand pressure, but only a ship, after all, with special tanks in her. She's on top of the water and wants to go down. Good. She fills her tanks and down she goes. She's down and wants to come up. All right. She empties her tanks and up she comes. She's got to. She couldn't stay down with her tanks empty if she wanted to—not unless she blew a hole in her side, or left her hatches open.

"Of course if her tanks don't work right! But we showed you three different ways to-day how she can beat that game. And anyway, no matter what happens, unless you're cruising deep, it's only a few feet to the top. Not like a crazy aeroplane a thousand feet up in the air! Something happens in an aeroplane, and where are you? With a busted stay or bamboo strut and you a mile in the air, where are you? Volplane? Maybe. But if you didn't—down you'd come atumbling like a hoop out of the clouds. That's 90 per cent—yes, maybe 99 per cent—of the submarine game: See that everything is right mechanically with your sub, then get a competent crew and—well, you're ready."

That is for the submariner's point of view. As for the danger from a shore-goer's point of view: Ashore we make the mistake, perhaps, of thinking of a submarine as a heavy, logy body fighting always for her life beneath an unfriendly ocean; whereas she is a light-moving easily controlled creature cruising in a rather friendly element.

The ocean is always trying to lift her atop and not hold her under water. A submarine could be sent under with a positive buoyancy so small—that is, with so little more than enough in her tanks to sink her—that an ordinary man standing on the sea bottom could catch her as she came floating down and bounce her up and off merely by the strength of his arms. Consider a submarine under water as we would a toy balloon in the air, say. Weight that toy balloon so that it just falls to earth. Kick that toy balloon and what does it do? Doesn't it bounce along, and after a few feet fall easily down again, and up and on and down again?

Picture a strong wind driving that toy balloon along the street, and the balloon, as it bumps along, meeting an obstacle: Will the balloon smash itself against the obstacle, or what will it do? What that balloon does is pretty much what a submarine would do if, while running along full speed under water, she suddenly ran into shoal water. She would go bumping along on the bottom; and, meeting an obstacle, if not too high, she would be more likely to bounce over it than to smash herself against it.

But sometimes they do run into things and fetch up?

That is right, they do. Let our naval men tell of the old C plunger—the first class of sub in our navy—which hit an excursion steamer down the James River way one time. She was a wooden steamer about 150 feet long, and the C's bow went clear through the steamer's sides. The steamer's engineer was sitting by his levers, reading the sporting page of his favorite daily, when he heard a crash and found himself on the engine-room floor. Looking around, he saw a wedge of steel sticking through the side of his ship. He did not know what it was, but he could see right away it didn't have a friendly look; so he hopscotched across the engine-room floor and up a handy ladder to the deck, taking his assistant along in his wake. After rescuing the passengers it took three tugboats to pry sub and steamer apart.

Our C boat must have hit her a pretty good wallop, for as they fell apart the steamer sank. They ran the little old C up to the navy-yard to see how much she was damaged. Surely after that smash she must be shaken up—her bow torpedo-tubes at least must be out of alignment! But not a thing wrong anywhere; they didn't even have to put her in dry dock. Out and about her business she went next morning.

Later another of the same class came nosing up out of the depths, and bumped head on and into a breakwater down that same country—a solid stone wall of a breakwater. What did she do? She bounced off, and, after a look around, also went on about her business.

* * * * *

In the morning our sub up-anchored for her run across the open bay. On the conning-tower was rigged a little bridge of slim brass stanchions and thin wire-rope rail, with the canvas as high as a man's chin for protection; and away she went in a wind that was still blowing hard enough to drive home-bound Gloucester fishermen down to storm trysails and sea enough to jump an out-bound destroyer of a thousand tons under easy steam to her lower plates whenever she lifted forward.

There was not a soul standing around on the main deck of the destroyer as we passed her, nor on her high forward turtle-deck, which was being washed clean; and surely not much comfort being bounced around on transoms in that destroyer below, nor too much dryness on her flying bridge. And yet here was our little sub—full speed and all—heading straight into high-curling seas and making fine weather of it.

Plunging her bow under, and through she'd go; and when she did the seas would go swashing up atop of her make-believe deck and come rolling down her round-top plates and squishing through the hundreds of round holes in her deck sides. But steady? Up on her little bridge we did not half the time have to hold on to her little steel-rope rail lines to keep our balance. She kept on going, hooked-up all the way, seas and wind and all to hinder her, and finished her five-hour run without so much as wetting our coat fronts up on the conning-tower bridge. A great little sea boat—a submarine.

Now for the personnel of the crew. The crew of the sub described were not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer—yes; and it would be a safe guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.

And there are thousands of young fellows working around garages and in machine-shops and electric-light plants ashore who are the very men needed for submarines. There will always have to be a sailor or two in a submarine; or there should be, for a real sailor is always a handy man to have around—he knows things that nobody else knows.

And so, if hanging around there are any young fellows with a taste for adventure and a trend for naval warfare, these submarines look to be the thing. They are only little fellows now, and, as they stand to-day, limited as to range and power of offense, but stay by and grow up with them, and by and by be with them when they will be as big as the battleships and of a radius of action that will stretch from here to—well, as far as they like; drawing their energy from the sun above them, or the sea-tides about them, and not having to see enemy ships to be able to fight them—equipped with devices not now invented but which will serve to feel those other ships and, feeling them, to plot their direction and distance!

Imagine a fleet of those lads battling under water some day—allowing no surface craft to live—feeling each other out and plotting direction and distance as they feel, and then letting go broadsides of torpedoes ten or a hundred times as powerful as anything we now have; and at the same time the air full of war-planes battling above them.

Infants, sea babies, is what they are to-day. But wait till they grow up!



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Transcriber's Note:

Typographical errors corrected:

Page 84: changed ay to aye

Page 191: moved quotes from end of paragraph to end of quote

Page 202: changed serivce to service

Page 208: changed underguard to under guard

Page 253: added missing word "to" after "evil happen."