beef and biscuits. Bully beef is known to civilians
the world over as corned beef, and to the new Sammy as "red horse." But
even bully beef and biscuits aren't so bad, and our thoughts were not so
much on what we were getting to eat as on when we were getting to France.

As the hours went by we more and more eagerly craned our necks over the
deck rails, trying to pierce the darkness of the deep for one flash of
light that might mean France hard ahead. But nothing happened, and one
after another the watchers dropped off to sleep.

When dawn broke we woke and rubbed our eyes. We were mystified and not a
little mortified. Where was France? There was nothing but water, blue as
heaven itself, around us. We were still at sea, and still going strong.

The hours of that day dragged out to an interminable length. No one spoke
of the matter--the question of land in sight was not discussed. Some of the
boys went back to poker. Others decided to be seasick, and subsequently
wished for a storm and the consequent wrecking of the ship, with a watery
death as relief.

Bully beef and biscuits at noon; bully beef and biscuits at our evening
meal, and no sight of land. Night came. The more hopeful of us did the
craning business over the deck rails for a few more hours. The
pessimistic, deciding France had ceased to be, returned to poker. We slept.
We woke. We watched the sun rise--over the sea!

About noon that day after the ration of bully beef had gone its round and
we, in consequence, were feeling pretty blue, there was a group of us
standing around doing nothing. Suddenly Tom King came rushing up in great
excitement. He had had an idea.

"Say, you fellows, I don't care a darn what any of you may say, I believe
these blinkin' English are sick of us and are sending us back to Canada!"

No such luck. Before sundown that evening we sighted land. We steamed
slowly into the port of St. ----. This is a large seaport town near the Bay
of Biscay, on the southwest coast of France. Why in the world they wanted
to take us all the way round there, I don't know. I was told that we were
among the first British troops to be landed at this port.

As soon as we disembarked from the boats that evening, before we left the
docks, we were issued goat-skin coats. The odor which issued from them
made us believe that they, at least in some former incarnation, had
belonged to another little animal family known as the skunk. Ugh! The
novelty of these co