told the first officer that the doctor was in a
room in the sick bay, and he was helped away limping along the deck.
Captain Frank Perry came along as cheerful as a morning in June. He
was Officer of the Day and a first class sailor. He came to my room to
report that there was a big gale outside, that the men were all right,
very few sick, that an artillery horse had broken out of his stall and
that he was down and likely dead; also that the waggons were loose in
the hold forward with one or two waltzing around. While he was telling
this he had to sit on the floor of the cabin. He had split his oil
cloth coat up the back, and a stray door speeding the parting guest
had slammed on a very tender part of his body, making it difficult for
him even to sit down. I laughed till my sides ached.

The admiralty stevedores had stowed the waggons in the hold and a mess
they had made of it. I asked him if the big guns were lashed down,
fearing that if one got loose in the lower hold it would go through
the side of the ship like paper. He assured me that the big gun
lashings held, and I ordered him to get a fatigue party and get baled
hay and dump it among the waggons to stop the riot, then to lash the
waggons. He departed on his errand.

The steward brought me in some Bovril and biscuits, and Major
Marshall, who also kept to his bunk on my advice, began feeding upon
hard tack to get into trench practice. Bye-and-bye Perry came back and
reported that Sergeant McMaster had fallen and broken his arm. Capt.
MacLaren was up and he was a good surgeon and hastily set the injured
limb. The sergeant had fallen and struck his elbow on the iron deck.
The men were all wearing their English boots with heavy iron nails in
the soles and they did not hold well on a steel deck. I took a few
looks out at the sea and it was a daisy. I saw the Captain who came in
and reported very bad weather, but he hoped to clear Cape Ushant.
Captain Perry reported that the ship was making about half a knot an
hour sometimes, sometimes not making anything, wouldn't steer, and
half the time in the trough of the sea, if there was any trough to be
found, for a cross gale had turned the sea into pyramids. He also
informed me that everything had been made fast, that the men were
cheerful and that there were no German submarines in sight, and the
storm continued with terrible violence all day. The destroyers had
sped as soon as we had left the British Coast. Several time