e you may suffer from, it won't be from
ennui." It was luck indeed, on two hours' notice, to have the chance of
getting out in just the way I had planned, where I had been quite
prepared to stand-by for twice as many days, and I fell in with the
arrangement at once.

Captain X---- ran his eye down a board where the names of a number of
destroyers were displayed against certain data indicating their
whereabouts and disposition. "_Zop_, _Zap_, _Zip_, _Zim_, _Zam_," he read
musingly. "_Zip_--yes, I don't think I can do better than send you on
the _Zip_. Her skipper is as keen as he is able, and the _Zip_ herself
has the reputation of having something of a nose for U-boats on her own
account. I'll advise him you're coming. Pick up your sea togs and put
off to her as soon as you can. Good luck." The American naval officer,
like the British, never says "Good-bye" if it can possibly be avoided.

They were already preparing to unmoor as I clambered over the side of
the _Zip_, and by the time I had shifted to sea-boots and oilskins in
the captain's cabin--which, unoccupied by himself during that strenuous
interval, was to be mine at sea--she was swinging in the stream and
nosing out into the creaming wakes of the two of her dazzle-painted
sisters who were preceding her down the bay.

* * * * *

There are several things that strike one as different on going to an
American warship after a spell in a British ship of the same class, but
the one which surges to meet you and goes to your head like wine is the
all-pervading spirit of vibrant, sparkling, unquenchable youthfulness.
Everything you see and hear seems to radiate it--every throb of the
engines, every beat of the screws--and at first you may almost get the
impression that it comes from the ship herself. But when you start to
trace it down, you find it bubbles from a single fount, the men, or
rather the boys--the lounging, laughing, devil-may-care boys. Theirs the
alchemy to transform every one and everything that comes near them into
the golden seeming of themselves.

This youthfulness of the American destroyers is in the crew rather than
the officers, for the latter--especially the captain and executive--will
average, if anything, a shade older than their "opposite numbers" in a
British destroyer. There is a certain minimum of highly specialised work
in navigating and fighting a destroyer which must be in the hands of
officers and men who