for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while
they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all
saying, but I was one brave man--we were all brave men, there was no
doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up
and gave me a bunch of flowers."

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

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

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

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

THE 343 STAYS UP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no more thought than usual of U-boats. Nobody would have been
surprised if one pop