By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock--three

in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning.

He had been asleep two hours.

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

ashore.

Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a

hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that

other light," the old man was saying.

"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be

high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another

few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind

on U-boats."

That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with

you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me

and you-all would have been. Look here"--he hauled down the chart-book

and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."

It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and

the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with

Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he

must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes.

By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside

Havre.

Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart

of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she

bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her.
About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket

gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them,

the brav' Américains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or

four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck,

saw the dramatic values and assumed most languid poses. Oh, the great

pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.

The worst wounded one--there was no pretense about him--had to be

carried down the gang-plank. Doc went with him. Good nursing was what he

needed; and he was going to see that he got it.

He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two assistants

turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch.

After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their

journey back by train and steamer--the two men in dungarees and

life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they

wear on destroyers--was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is passed up

here.

Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he

told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and

the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own.

"There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded

Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the

place. There was a little square there with little cafés all around the

square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee."

"So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been

reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to

me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was--only a

little corner of France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little

place after our week to sea.

"And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it

was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap

they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while

they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all

saying, but I was one brave man--we were all brave men, there was no

doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up

and gave me a bunch of flowers."

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

eight years old."

"No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster--he

stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit--said:

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

"What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute

since we left our ship."

THE 343 STAYS UP

Most shore-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers,

would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim
and floppety-like.

But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They

have tried them out and know. You take a destroyer in a ninety-mile

breeze of wind, put her stern to it, give her five or six knots'

headway, and there she'll lay till the North Atlantic blows dry.

And that is not their only quality. Speed, of course; but not that

either. They have a way of staying up after being cut up. There was that

one which was of the first to cross over for the U-boat hunting game.

One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British

sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those

little collisions are bound to occur.

This one was hit amidships--bam!--and amidships is a bad place for a

destroyer to be hit--her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie

amidships.