from sea.
The wonder was how she ever stayed up long enough to make port. That
gaping after end open to sea and sky, and the bare propeller shaft
sticking out from the insides of her--she sure did look like she needed
nursing! They agreed that they were a lucky bunch to get her home.

One poor fellow was killed--a wonder there were not more--and all hands
were sorry for him; but tragedy and comedy so often bunk together, and
men who adventure are more apt to dwell on the humorous than the tragic
side of things. There was that about the code-books. The instructions to
all ships are to get rid of the code-books if there is ever any
likelihood of the enemy capturing the ship. The code-books are bound in
thick lead covers. They are kept in a steel box, and altogether they
weigh--I do not know, I never lifted them--but some say they weigh 150,
some say 200 pounds. After the 343 was torpedoed, an ensign grabbed up
the code-book chest, tossed it onto his shoulder, and waltzed out of the
ward-room passage and onto deck with it. You would think it was a
feather pillow he was dancing off with. When the danger of capture was
over our young ensign hooked his fingers into the chest handles to waltz
back with it. But nothing doing. It took two of them to carry it back,
and they did not trip lightly down any passageway with it either,
proving once again that there are times when a man is stronger than at
other times.

After the 343 made port the injured were handed over to the sick bay of
the flag-ship. There were two of them who must have been pretty handy to
the storm centre of the explosion. At least, it took two young surgeons
on the flag-ship all of one day to pick the gun-cotton out of their
backs.

There was another man. The doctors, when they came to look him over,
found the print of a perfect circle on the fleshiest part of his
anatomy. It was so deeply pressed in that the blue and yellow flesh
bulged out all around from it. The doctors said it must have been made
by a wash-basin being blown against him as he ran up the ladder to the
deck. But the man himself knew better than that. "Excuse me, doctor," he
said, "but it was nothing so light and soft as a wash-basin hit me. It
was something more solid and bigger than that. It was the water-cooler,
and I didn't run up any ladder--I was blown up."

The destroyer people have great faith in the durability of their little
ships. They are slim-built, and not much thicker in the p