Evening star., 1918-06-23

parody called What Do We Tow
from Here. Boys: What Do We Tow
from Here?" which was so good that
the admiral almost drowned cut the
black gang on the chorus. There was
another parody which had TO do with
the shortage of food, called 'Don't
Bite the Hard That's Feeding You"
during the singing of which the sun
shone for the first time since leaving
rendezvous 3.
* K
SO on December they picked up
rendezvous d, and on December II
the yacht A, which had barely had
time enough to put in a couple of
days in the engine room, was ordered
out on a little chore which had moth
ing to do with the war. In heavy
sea with full gale blowing from the
E.N.E.," this silken little spit kid.
with a lady fgurehead, ton of am
munition in her magazine, two feet
of green water racing aft on deck
and six officers in the wardroom try
ing to anchor mad chair, proceeded
- slightly eighty miles to pick UP the
survivors of a wrecked freighter.
She anchored for the night in the
lee of a headland, riding to both an
-
jagged rocks all about her and every
body dead asleep except the watch.
The next day she took aboard forty
two shipwrecked men and ran before
the wind for her rendezvous with
every pump clanking. A sea filled
her well deck and sent the ship
wrecked Chinese wallowing about
neck-deep. A sea short-circuited her
electric wiring, rang all her alarm
gongs and sent her gunners zigzag-
ging to general quarters And at
pm. she shot through the break
water. making all possible speed" as
her war diary has it. with the native
pilot under the cushions on the ward
room transom, cursing his boss and
calling on Jesu Christu to save him
But all that, of course, had nothing
to do with the war.
On December 10, with allies (sub-
marine warnings) going to the chart
house every half hour and the weeds
full of S SIS, Squadron X, now con-
sSting of six yachts and ten chasers.
stood out on its final lap to Euro
pean port.
Two days out, the yacht BIS deck
house was stove in by a sea and she
put her stern to it and was smashed in
aft. l have seen her at the base here.
She used to do her eighteen knots in
the Hudson river, but she'll never do
eight again. The yacht HIS chaser
lost three Frenchmen overheard, and
the yacht X saw two men go over
board, one to be picked up by its
chaser and the other to be lost.
The life of that American was
Squadron KS toll fee to Davy Jones
for the crossing. Four days out the
captains held a conference at sea
which four of the yachts were ordered
to abandon the trip and put into this
base for refuge. their condition max
ing it impossible for them to finish
. remainder of trip"
And on the fifth day out, at $40
am, the two remaining yachts and
ten chasers ran slap-bang at sixteen
knots into a convoy.
wonder if you know what it means
20 see a convoy dead ahead of you
with its running lights switched on
call lit up like a lot of drug stores'D,
with the captain on the bridge in his
pyjamaS: the gun crews working like
so many men cranhing flivvers; the
chasers blinking out recognition sig
nails, literally, to save their lives, and
every ship at general quarters in that
state of suspense in which a gunner
fires first and tellr the bridge about
it afterward-"hard right" and you
duck under tall cruiser, so near that
you can make out it's five-inchers
trained point blank on you; hard
left" and you slap up against roll
ing transport, so near you can hear
its officers talking on deck; hard
right" and you scrape supply ship
All the war diary says about it is
"Steered on various courses for five
minutes to avoid ships in convoy
Captain coming. Went to general
quarters at 5:10-Secure at 5:55-and
at resumed course 109 PSC."
If that doesn't make your heart run
like a racing propeller. 1 don't know
what will.
Well, the upshot of it was that the
chasers went astray. And on Christ
mas morning, the sixth day out, after
lying to trying to recover an even
keel for four hours, "this vessel" (the
captain Of the S. S. Olympic might
have used the same expression) was
ordered to find them. Shortly after
noon. shaking to the beating of tre-
mendous head seas and the booming
roar of a No. 10 wind, she found two
of them, one leading the other along
by the hand. One was short of food
and she gave it something to eat. The
other was short of gas and she passed
it another of these two and half
inch wire hawsers. Then she set out
to find eight others She hunted all
afternoon christmas afternoon) and
found none. Just as if she were a
dreadnaught, she challenged a French
cruiser at dark and demanded to
know whether the cruiser had seen
any submarine chasers.
"Yes, 1 escorted eight into
this morning." said the French