Again on night duty for a few days before leaving on my vacation, now due. Think of having nothing to do! I am drunk with the very idea.

Picture me, by the light of a pale and glimmering oil-lamp; time, 2:45 A. M. Every half-hour I get up and do a round, peeping carefully under the bedclothes here and there looking for incipient hemorrhages. There are three cases likely to flow at any moment, one especially, an amputation, operated on yesterday. There is a tourniquet at the foot of his bed, just in case-but hidden so that he can't see it, for it would frighten him. Sister comes in from time to time and looks, too.

My costume is choice. We have taken lately to removing our aprons at about 10 P. M., putting on instead a long, white hospital shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. It saves laundry, and does very well for cooking supper, washing up, and making beds. Then one's apron is quite fresh for breakfast, and has n't that up-all-night look about it, even if the face above it has. Yesterday (Sunday) I mounted to chapel, where my American flag is displayed. Chapel is in the loft, and the altar is made of packing-boxes, covered with a sheet, and decorated with field

flowers. Behind, hung to the bare rafters, are the Allied flags. M. l'Abbé officiates, and there is a wheezy harmonium, played by a workman with a rusty tenor voice. All the blessés who are able and pratiquant climb or hobble up the three flights. and sit on the benches, singing lustily. A few American soldiers come in, too, their khaki looking doubly neat and military amid the assorted and varied hues of faded and ill-matched pajamas displayed by our men. There is for the blessés an added interest to the service since the Americans have come; for they like to see them face to face, and judge, or guess, what manner of men they may be. The service itself I shall not describe, for it is the same the world over, the only difference being that M. l'Abbé makes all his announcements in both French and English. He has not yet acquired American.

Now the dawn is breaking. Can it indeed be that there will one day be a dawn of peace? All is cold and silent. The east is streaked gray and white, with bars of purple cloud across. I must cease and go to work. The stillness is like the grave; not a stir, not a sound. No word from the passing night or coming day. Across the road are the precious, damp, and shadowy stacks of hay, sweet-perfumed, in neat rows to the other edge of the field, and beyond the greenish black silhouette of trees against the "wistful, the fast-widowing sky," the wavy horizon. With you it is only eight o'clock in the evening, and that same moon, perhaps, is rising. Maybe you are wondering what I am doing or think that I am fast asleep.

ITH a slow, lazy roll our boat laid her slim cheek against a warm wave, then lifted it, all wet and glistening, into the last, rich rays of the sun. Far off, fully eighty miles to port, a Spanish mountain raised its golden head from behind the curve of the sea. To starboard the African coast loomed in dusky heat haze. On our beam the convoy of twenty ships steamed in double line across a violet sea, their oil smoke streaming in black-velvet pennons across the smoldering sky. While the great crimson ball of the sun hung poised on the horizon, a patrol-boat sailed across its face at the exact distance required to bring out the hull, spars, masts, ropes in black silhouette, as though stamped by die on a medal of fire. It was wonderfully beautiful. Its quiet loveliness laid a spell of silence even on the sailor lads who were skylarking astern. A hush fell over the ship, broken only by the heart-beat of the screw.

"Yachting in the Mediterranean." The officer on the bridge broke the long silence. "This is what your millionaire pays his good money for."

In our case it was literally true, for our boat, a converted yacht in Uncle Sam's Mediterranean fleet, was said to be the finest yacht in the world before the war. Then she was a sailor's dream of polished wood, brass, copper; her decks snow-white from a daily bleach of squeezed lemons. It spoiled a million dollars a year to keep her in commission and entertain the princes, presidents, and kings that used her for a playground.

Generally she lay at Kiel, and one of her officers possesses an engraved card of invitation to the great annual ball after

the Kiel Regatta, signed by his Imperial Majesty, the kaiser. Another American officer occupies the beautiful state-room in which the kaiser often slept, and the steward who used to wait upon him was still on board when the yacht was taken into our service. He told many an interesting story of the days when King Edward and Kaiser Wilhelm sat at opposite ends of the ward-room table, now used-the irony of events!-by American officers who are busily engaged in hunting down his Imperial Majesty's U-boats. He said that the kaiser appeared to be very fond of his uncle, which affords a revealing glimpse of his character, for we know that even in those days he was plotting to enslave the world and bind England with German forged chains.

While we stood there on the bridge talking, some of his Imperial Majesty's latest work went floating by in the shape of torpedoed wreckage; and as the glow in the sky passed through every shade of crimson and rose to deepest saffron, and the sea's violet deepened to indigo, my companion laid before me the problem of the Mediterranean.

"Conditions here are ideal for U-boat operations. The Mediterranean is a bottle two thousand miles in length with a neck at each end, and squeezed thin in the middle between Sicily and the African coast. Through the bottle-neck at Gibraltar at one end, the Suez Canal at the other, passes a large trade. To understand its volume just draw a line from Canada to Gibraltar, another from Cape Horn. Into that great triangle pours not only the trade of the Americas and the Panama Canal, but into it also comes the West African trade from the south; the British, French, and Scandinavian from the

north; all of the world's trade for the far East; and those dozen nations that have sea borders along the Mediterranean. After passing in at Gibraltar, this stream of ships cannot diverge very widely, for though, as you know, we are a day's sail from Gib, Africa and Spain are both in sight. And the stream must concentrate again between Sicily and Africa. This makes good hunting for U-boats. They have two fat chances, coming and going, at every ship.

"The neutrality of Spain, again, favors the U-boats, though not to the extent one might suppose. It is true they can, and no doubt do, obtain fresh food-supplies from Spanish fishermen. The length of a U-boat's cruise, however, is not determined by fuel or food. Of these she carries sufficient for the longest cruise. But when her torpedoes and ammunition are exhausted, she must return to her base at Pola or Cattara, in the Adriatic. Spain's chief use to the U-boat is as a city of refuge to which it can fly from immediate pursuit, or intern if badly damaged.

"Lastly, when Germany threw a strangler's cord of U-boats around the British Isles in a desperate attempt to throttle her commerce, it took every sailor and ship England could muster to keep her own ports open and Germany's closed. After we came into the war, it became still more necessary to guard the American transport lines. Accordingly, the fastest and best ships were naturally used for that service, leaving less important areas to be guarded by slower boats."

I had already seen our fleet, perhaps the most remarkable that was ever swept together by a strenuous emergency. Add to a score of converted yachts half a dozen coast-guard vessels; a few old destroyers; a couple of ice-breakers drawn from service in Northern harbors; a gunboat built specially for use on Chinese rivers, with cigarette funnels almost as tall as her masts; a vessel that fired the first gun in the Spanish-American War, mix well, and throw in a seasoning of "chasers" and submarines, and you have our Mediterranean Aleet.

Of the destroyers, one had lain at the bottom of the ocean for six months, and would have been there yet if the dire need for ships had not caused her resurrection. Most of the others had served for years in the Philippines under orders never, never, never, to venture beyond swimming distance from the land. It is said, indeed, that a machinist's mate was tried by general court martial for inadvertently dropping a monkey-wrench through one ship's bottom; but though this, perhaps, ought to be taken as a figure of speech, it conveys a fair idea of their condition when the war came along and knocked the doctrine of "safety first" into a cocked hat. Halfway round the world, through the China. and Indian seas, they had come by way of Suez, meeting some savage weather on the way. From a few stray observations I gathered the trip must have been quite Homeric. But, when cross-examined, all their commander could remember was that he had, "Bought the finest lace you ever saw at Malta." However, such as they are, here they are, setting the pace for the coast-guard.

Between the latter service and the navy, by the way, exists an ancient rivalry which is expressed in a saying, "When the navy runs for port, the coast-guard puts to sea." The feeling undoubtedly is based on pride of ancestry, for your true-blue coastguardsman proudly traces his lineage back to Noah, who ran the Ark on the first patrol around the peak of Ararat. His service, he asserts, was quite mildewed with age before the "upstart navy" put to sea in the first basket coracle calked with clay. The navy, on the other hand, holds the coast-guard in tolerance as a sort of hybrid, half animal, half fish, a composite between a lighthouse-keeper and a revenue shark. Nevertheless, here coast-guard and navy have fused so completely that it is. quite impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.

Working in perfect harmony, they are getting results, for not a boat of them, icebreakers, ramshackle destroyers, China steamers, yachts, is averaging fewer than four thousand steaming miles a month.

The yacht under my feet had done her five thousand six hundred in the last thirty days or twice the distance between Liverpool and New York.

In, coal up, out, describes the life. Blow high, blow low, they ran their convoys last winter through black night rains, bitter frosts, dreaded fogs, half the length of the Mediterranean, and from the Straits of Gibraltar fourteen hundred miles northward to British and French ports; for the stream of ships, the Allies' arterial blood, must be kept in circulation.

A radio exchange between one yacht and her consort during a Biscay storm eloquently explains that hard winter's work.

"I am in sinking condition. Please stand by to help," said one. To which the other replied, "Am sinking myself."

Both were awash below, about due to founder, when a sudden break in the storm saved them.

The record of lives lost last winter also tells the tale of hardship and danger-of American lives paid to insure the delivery of Allied supplies. The converted yacht Alcedo was torpedoed in French waters: the destroyer Jacob Jones was sunk by the U-53 in the English Channel; and the Chauncey was sunk, with a combined loss of life of over one hundred. From other ships twenty-two men were washed overboard and drowned, and many others had marvelous escapes.

One lad, washed overboard in a black night storm, was thought to be hopelessly lost till a voice hailed the watch from under the stern. He had caught the log-line, which trails for a couple of hundred feet behind, and hauled himself along it. Another escape was still more marvelous. Washed overboard at night from one destroyer, this particular lad was heaved by a wave upon the deck of another vessel half a mile astern. When he was restored to his own ship at the end of the voyage, his captain thus addressed him:

"Young man, you have used up all the luck you will have in all your life. The navy is no safe place for you. Take my advice: get out of it as soon as Uncle Sam will let you."

There is nothing like a night watch on the bridge to produce stories. The quiet and darkness, which are broken only by the heart-beat of the screw timing the lap of the waves under the bows, provide the ideal atmosphere. One has only to listen to have the whole underseas war unroll like a cinema on the night's warm curtain.

Every base has some Hun commander who has achieved notoriety, usually by differing from the bloody practices of his fellows. In Irish waters it had been "Kelly," the one man who fought like a gentleman. In French waters "Penmarsh Pete" was the celebrated local character, though his reputation was due to an oyster-like clinging to the rock after which he was named, and his industry in sowing a devil's spawn of mines betwen dusk and dark in the French ship channels. Now I heard of "Spartel Jack," who held the lime-light in the Mediterranean for years.

Like "Kelly," "Spartel" was a fair fighter, and always warned his ships before sinking them; and if it was not practicable to tow the boats to land himself, he would wireless their position in to the base. His boat was finally crippled so badly by a depth bomb that he had to intern at a Spanish port; whereupon a number of "limies" donned civilian clothes and went up to see her. Lo and behold! who should they recognize in Jack but an old acquaintance, a tug-boat captain who had served twelve years at the base before the war. He greeted them nicely, but grouched a bit about his internment. He had never liked Spanish cooking. It was doing in his liver. And when the news spread, and more old friends came up to see him, Jack was gone. He had provided the

world with another Hun scandal by breaking internment.

Thereafter the old pirate carried on his sinkings until, not long ago, a depth mine. sent his boat to the bottom. But he did not go with her, for just as she sank, the hatch flew up, and two men leaped out. One was Jack, so badly injured by the explosion, however, that he died a few days later in the base hospital, greatly to

the regret of the British, who love a game enemy.

Genuine human feeling, the despised human interest of the highbrow critic, crops up in many stories. Man that is born of woman must have something to love, and in lieu of their wives, sisters, and sweethearts, sailors' affections usually center on some dumb animal, preferably a dog.

A boat of castaways, picked up by our yacht, had with them a fine hound bitch that had just given birth to two pups when the ship was torpedoed. One pup was killed by the explosion, but the sailors wrapped the mother and surviving pup in a pea-jacket and placed them in the boat. But when, hours later, the coat was opened, instead of one, four wiggly puppies raised their heads for a first blink at their mother's world. She, poor creature, died of inflammation of the kidneys; whereupon the crew adopted the orphans and brought them up on a bottle. They can still hardly toddle, but their one hundred and seven foster-fathers are ready to bet a year's pay on their ability to whip their weight in kittens.

While the tales were in course, a brilliant tropic moon had sailed up from behind Africa and now laid a silver finger upon a mass of floating wreckage, the second reminder that evening of the danger that dogs the heels of the fleet. Thoughts of the torpedo that may come crashing at any moment through the side accompanied me down to my state-room. When the Alcedo was torpedoed, at night, her wireless operator was blown out of his bunk through the deck, and, with great presence of mind, ran straight to his post and began to tick off an S. O. S. I remembered it, and fell asleep with a death-grip on the sides of my bed, intending the deck and ceiling-beams to be well out of my way

before I rose.

However, I gained the deck next morning in the customary manner, to find the convoy steaming through golden sunlight across a bright-blue sea. A dirigible that had just come over from Africa soared above, all silver iridescence. It guarded us

the greater part of the day, and when it left a hydroplane came booming like a great insect out from the land to circle and recircle the convoy. Others appeared during the remaining three days of our voyage along those pleasant seas, nor left us long alone till we dropped anchor in the harbor of an African port.

With its mosques and minarets and narrow streets, which meandered at will under frequent arches into all sorts of blind alleys and pockets, it was about as queer a corner of the world as any into which the war has pitched our sailor boys. Through narrow, barred windows one caught the dark flash of Oriental eyes. Veiled women shuffled past in twos and threes. Within recessed doorways, wonderfully nailed in strange patterns, old Arabs in flowing white burnouses smoked and drank in stately calm that took no heed of the war or civilization's frets.

Sitting that evening with the ship's doctor within the gates of a café, I watched the white sailor caps of our boys go bobbing down a polyglot human stream in which the horizon-blue tunics and crimson breeches of the French, the brass and khaki of the English, the red and yellow of negroid troops, and various uniforms of Italians and Serbians formed a brilliant arabesque around the white background of Arab garments. Their bright, clean American faces shone still brighter and cleaner by comparison with the muddybrown visages about them. Cheerful, good-natured, they floated along the human stream or sat in groups sipping the warm native beer.

To us, sitting there, came one of our ensigns with three "limy" officers in tow, commanders of patrol-boats serving with our squadron, than whom the war has produced no braver or hardier set of men. And while that stream of humanity flowed like liquid fire under our eyes, fluxing and flowing in new color combinations, they talked shop talk that was at once both history and romance.

One had served in the North Sea at the

beginning of the war, and he told with a queer little grin of his experiences.