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VOYAGING IN WAR TIME It makes for a little thought to be crossing the Atlantic at this time when you ran neither tell by what route you will be taken nor what chance may bo lying in wait for you I am out to tell all who will listen to me what the Land of War is like how the brave live and die enduring hardship for the sake of liberty and honor and all that true hearts love and if I reach the other side I shall let myself know no rest till I have shown what I have seen and told what I have known And as I walk the dock of one of our great liners my heart gets full of thought of the boys living and dead with whom I have shared joy and sorrow in trench and camp and billet in the real front where hope and fear share the same dugout and sorrow has always an intimate hour with the sharers of the vigil vigilThis This is a notable ship In the beginning of the war she was fitted up as an armed cruiser and she proved how the merchant sailor still breathed the spirit of the brave of ancient days She was steaming on the 14th of September 1914 off the coast of Brazil for Montevideo when she saw a column of smoke rising near the Trinidad rocks and she made for it She had four guns on each side and two aft and she got ready for action Soon her watch could make out two red funnels and the signal then to the engine room was full speed ahead for there was no time to waste as the Dresden and other wellknown German ships were in those seas When about two thousand yards away she flung a blank shot over and the other ship replied And then it was hammer and tongs from about 12 noon till after 2 oclock oclockOne One shell landed under her bridge blew away the steering gear with the engine room communications and set the shiy on fire The steering was then conducted from aft and messages were shouted down to the engineers to pump up water to the deck but though they kept every pump going full blast the deck pine had been broken and water never readied the tire till buckets were requisitioned and the pipe repaired Meanwhile she was receiving a heavy hammering till she managed to sink her foe which had the latest German guns and a heavier armament altogether than our liner She won through masterly and adroit seamanship She kept her stern for the most part to her enemy and so was able to pepper away with five guns firing in all 415 shells in the engagement She was pierced in 392 nlaces Five of her men were killed and nine died of wounds About thirty were wounded alto ¬ gether The dead were buried in the dark and when committing their l odies to the deep the cap ¬ tain said Men we have conie to the close of a glorious day Wo are sorry indeed for what has happened to our comrades But they have fought t good light as all of you have done and shown that you can behave as true British seamen should and as I exnected you to do There were well won decorations but the engineers and stokers were forgotten though surely theirs was a position of anxiety beyond expression hearing as they did the crash and feeling the sliock of the shells yet in entire ignorance of what was happening aloft a position demanding immeasurable courage coolness and devotion to duty dutyThe The man who told me the story sitting on the edge of my bed had no rhetoric for the telling of it but just told it as though it were no greater thing than the ordinary routine of a stormy episode with just that spice which a brave heart feels in a little danger giving an edge to duty He was on another sliin in less than a month and she was tor ¬ pedoed 200 miles off Malta The rescued were picked up by a hospital ship and carried on to Salonika so he had a run for his money before he was back again on the old liner going westward watchfully through the submarine zone of the Atlantic AtlanticWe We began boat drill on our first day out and were fortunate in this in having at the head of it a captain who was crossing to take up duties from the other side He had been a submarine hunter and before that had exnerienced the tender mercies of the Hun at sea In the early days of the war he was torpedoed on board one of our famous warships ia the North Sea swam to another warship which had waited to rescue the drowning only herself to be torpedoed in turn and he had to cling to a plank with five middies four of whom dropped off before he and the fifth were saved savedWe We began our voyage with beautiful weather zigzagging as the custom is There were some aboard who watched our course with some signs of justifiable nervousness for they had been torpedoed only a week previously and their anxiety naturally increased as we aiinroached the neighborhood of their disaster One of them an Australian soldier who had for some mouths been a sniper in No Mans Land was on his way out to be married in New York his bride having come over from Australia to meet him there And though he bad lost every ¬ thing except what he stood in it was the loss of a week of his leave that vexed him most There were also business men returning from Japan and elsewhere in the east whose whole possessions were now in Drvv Jones locker instead of their own One man had been in his bath at the time and es ¬ caped barefoot in his pajamas And few had had the comfort of an overcoat for the seven hours ex ¬ posure ere they reached shore shoreIt It was with some emotion that one saw the lone islands of our native land fading behind us ia the haze of the late afternoon as we swept out into the wide leagues of the western ocean oceanThe The colors on the deep were marvelously beautiful The waves as they fell over were caught by the afternoon gleam and fell in masses of amaranth and pearl Fortunately for us we came into a belt of wind that lifted the seas and all night the ship rolled and swung creaking and sneaking awaking one often in the dark We all slept for two nights according to orders fully clothed with lifeboats besides us and some with lifebelts on And through the day we were similarly equipped equippedOn On Wednesday morning the sea was wild beyond description and grand beyond dreams Far and wide the great rolling hills of foamstreaked and formcrested waves swept against and past us sometimes dashing right over our highest decks Sometimes I forgot it was the sea It looked like a great gray wilderness of hilltops and away off on the horizon line the suntipped billows were like snowcapped peaks and ridges Sometimes it was like a life amideath grapple between senti ¬ ent beings The ocean gripped the ship by the throat and they swung together till she shook herself five and pressed on climbing the great slopes of almost almighty force that tried to wall her passage westwards The power of the wind was tremendous and sometimes we were only hold ¬ ing our own The huge waves rose high above our heads and now seemed to slope away towards some far peak behind us down which we slid and now rose to some height away before us towards which we painfully climbed a steep and sore ascent ascentWe We were out of the submarine zone but even though we had not been it was just the best kind of weather to prevent our being followed by some overdaring sleuth of the sea For two days we swung on wildly clinging to the skirt of the cyclone During it all we had our boat drill under the guidance of our torpedoed captain and every ¬ body was faithful in attendance The overseer of tlie ping in our boat was an example of fidelity He hail never been on tin ocean in his life and he was sick every day but even in the stormiest phase he crawled up to tlie deck crept into the lx nt and saw to the security of the plug which had been committed to his care It was a guarantee of his faltlifuIncHs in his sphere of business in London which probably had indeed been the reason of his haying this journey laid upon him in a time when only necessity and duty call folks to travel ou the seas Edinburgh Scotsman
