lates than
seven pages of the Sunday paper--they know that, but maybe that is their
safety. There is no getting a fair wallop at them. They evade the issue.
One man compared them to a hot-water bottle. Try to swat a loaded
hot-water bottle. And what happens? "When you poke it in one place don't
it bulge out in another to make up for it? Sure it does. And how do you
account for that other one we were talking about? A couple o' years
ago--the one that had her stern cut off so that the men in the after
compartment leaned out where the bulkhead had been, but wasn't then, and
chinned themselves up to the deck from the outside? And how do you
account for her bouncing along at twenty knots or more in a gale of wind
and a rough sea, and nothing happening them? Get shook up--yes. But they
come home, don't they? They sure do. Maybe it's luck, but also maybe
it's the way they're thrown together--loose and limber-like."

Whatever it is, they are dashing in and out over there on their job of
convoying merchant ships and hunting U-boats. They expect to get their
bumps, and they do; but so long as they get an even break they are not
kicking. The chart-house gang on the 343 say that they are satisfied
they get an even break all right. If she did not fill her little
three-straight that time then nobody ever did get any cards in the draw.

They were sticking a new stern onto the 343 when I left the naval base.
When they get it well glued on she is going out again. Maybe that same
U-boat--you can't always tell, some people have luck--maybe that same
U-boat will come drifting her way again. And if they see her first--pass
the word for the gun crews!

THE CARGO BOATS

I have spoken earlier of meeting cargo boats--tramp steamers, we call
them at home--while crossing the Atlantic. In peace times a fellow would
naturally expect to see them here, or almost anywhere else on the wide
ocean; but to see them in these war days was to set a man wondering
about them.

Wondering, because more than 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships
of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk
heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots,
furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times
getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a
view-point of their own!

At this naval base of which I have been writing, you could look almost
any day and see 5, 10