no knowing when a man
will be needing a good meal to be standing by him inside. And we were
still eating when the messenger came in with a radio. He passed it to
the skipper, who read it to himself, whistled, and then read aloud:
TORPEDOED--CLAN LINDSAY.

The _Clan Lindsay_ was another of our convoy, and she had been within
1,000 yards of our ship when we last came about to zigzag back across
the front of our column.

We looked at one another, and one said: "Well, you got to hand it to
Fritz for being on the job every minute."

And another: "Yes, but it looks like a big night to-night. Two in an
hour! And eighteen more ships and eight destroyers to pick from yet! If
he starts off like that, what d'y' s'pose he'll be batting by morning?"

The ward-room on our ship opens onto the ship's galley; and from the
ship's galley another door opens onto the deck. Through the open
galley-door just then came a muffled explosion--a great Woof!

We all thought just one thing--they've got us too!--and we all sort of
half curled up, and would not have been a bit surprised if the next
instant we found ourselves sailing through the deck overhead. The
feeling lasted for perhaps three seconds, and then our skipper,
happening to look up, saw that the colored mess-boy George was grinning
widely.

"What the devil you laughing at?" barked out our skipper.

George took his eyes off the galley-door, but his grin remained. Said
George: "Cap'n, I see de flame. The galley stove just done bust!"

The galley stove on our ship was an oil-burner. It had back-fired, and
so the loud Woof!

Later it came out that the _Clan Lindsay_ wasn't torpedoed at all; but
one of our destroyers dropped a depth charge so close to her to get a
U-boat that she thought she was.

* * * * *

The camouflaged big liner sank, but not until the two of our destroyers
standing by had taken off every one of the 503 passengers, one taking
the people off the deck, the other picking up those in the small boats.
One destroyer--the 396, say--took off 307 of these passengers. Her
skipper passed the word by radio to the 384, which had gathered in 196
passengers, including the commodore. The 384 got the message, only she
got it 7 instead of 307 people rescued.

"Seven survivors!" said the 384's skipper. "I wonder why she radioed
that?" He meditated over the puzzle and by and by solved it to his
satisfaction.

"Of course, what she wants is for