rolled out of his bunk.

As he stepped out on deck he could see that the lookouts had adopted
life-belts for the night. The lookouts were men from among the troops,
and now each man as he went off watch was handing over his life-belt to
the next coming on. They had had to use the soldiers for lookouts. In
these war days no merchant ship can supply from her regular crew
one-tenth of the men needed for lookout work in the war zone. The
soldiers were all right, but just then our naval officer felt sorry for
them. He had been having them up before him afternoons, lecturing them
on their duties as lookouts. That very afternoon he had had a bunch of
them before him while he explained a few new things. He had spent extra
time on the men who were to be on forward watch this very night, with
the men who were to go into the bow or into the forward crow's nest. And
now they were there, buried as the bow went smash into it, or--those of
them who had drawn the crow's nest--swinging a hundred feet in the air.
All right for old seagoers, but most of these boys had never in their
lives before been on an ocean-going ship. Some had never even seen a big
ship until they came to the seacoast for their trip. They had great
eyesight, some of these young fellows--men who had lain on the
bull's-eye at a thousand yards regularly were bound to have that--and
they made good lookouts once they got the idea, but climbing the last
twenty feet of that ladder to the crow's nest, leaning back under part
of the time with life-belt stuffed under their overcoats--they surely
must have been thinking that a soldier's duties were difficult as well
as various in these days of war.

A ship on tossing seas and the wind blowing a dirge through the
rigging--well, a man may be brave enough to fight all the Germans this
side the Russian line, but if he is new to sea life he is apt to see
things. Two soldiers were standing on deck when our naval officer came
out of his room. They were not on guard. They did not have to be
there--they were staying awake on their own account. One said to the
other: "There, there--look! Ain't that a submarine?"

It was a shadow as high as a house. "If that is a submarine," thinks our
officer, "then it is good night to us, for she's a whale of a one!"

It was no submarine. It was the shadow of one of their own ships which
had been driven out of column.

It was blowing hard when our officer made the bridge. He could not see
far, bu