ept going out of commission, and their radio operator
kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S--he never let up
with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down
and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks
abeam. The Britisher got the word across the wind, and tried to pass a
messenger--a light line, that is--across to the 343. They did not make
it. They tried again and again, but no use. The 343 was then within a
few hundred yards of the breakers.

The skipper of the Britisher then hailed that he would try to get a boat
to them. They could hear him calling for volunteers to man the boat. He
got the volunteers, and without being able to see every detail of it in
the dark, the 343's people knew what was happening. They were making a
lee of the trawler so as to get the boat over. But the boat was swashing
in and out against the side of the ship--up on a sea and then bang! in
against the side of the ship. Merely as a sporting proposition, their
own lives not depending on it, the 343's people would have been praying
for that boat to get safely away.

The boat managed at last to get away from the side of the mine-sweeper,
and in time, pitching down on the rollers, they made out to heave a line
aboard the 343. And on the deck of the 343 they were right there to grab
it and bend it on to a hawser. Fine. Off went the mine-sweeper after she
had taken her boat aboard, tugging heartily. She tugged too heartily for
the length and size of the hawser. It parted.

They did it all over again--the lowering the boat in the rough sea, the
passing the line, the bending on of the bigger line, the attempt to tow.
And again it parted. Wouldn't that test men's faith in their good luck?
The 343 thought so. Once more tried it, and once more it parted, but
this time not parting until they were far enough off the beach to be
safe till daylight.

At daylight a British sloop-of-war came along with a real big hawser and
gave them a real tow to our naval base. A group of us were steaming out
with a fleet of merchantmen to sea as she was being towed in. Our
fellows would have liked to turn out to give her a little cheer, also to
inquire into the details of her mishap, but we had to keep on going, and
wait until our return to port after a cruise to have a look at her.

She was in dry dock when we got back to port, and the most
smashed-up-looking object that any of us had ever seen come in