an lads, full of pranks and play
and laughter, but they were strangely silent to-night as the ship
ploughed through the storm. The storm seemed to have made men of them.
They were just boys, but American boys in these days become men
overnight, and acquit themselves like men.

I watched their silent forms below me with a great feeling of
wonderment and pride. The ship lurched as it swung in its zigzag
course. Then suddenly I heard a sweet sound coming from one of the
boys below me. I think that it was big, raw-boned "Montana" who
started it. It was low at first and, with the storm and the vibrations
of the ship, I could not catch the words. The music was strangely
familiar to me. Then the boy on the port gun beside "Montana" took the
old hymn up, and then the two reserve gunners who were standing by, and
then the gunners on the starboard side, and I caught the old words of:

"Jesus, Saviour, pilot me
Over life's tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll
Hiding rock and treacherous shoal;
Chart and compass came from Thee;
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me."

Above the creaking and the vibrations of the great ship, above the
beating of the storm, the gunners on the deck below, all unconsciously,
in that storm-tossed night were singing the old hymn of their memories,
and I think that I never heard that wonderful hymn when it sounded
sweeter to me than it did then, as the second verse came sweetly from
the lips and hearts of those gunners:

"As a mother stills her child
Thou canst hush the ocean wild;
Boistrous waves obey Thy will
When Thou sayst to them, 'Be still.'
Wondrous Sovereign of the sea,
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me."

We hear a good deal of how our boys sing "Hail! Hail! The Gang's All
Here" and "Where Do We Go From Here, Boys?" as a ship is sinking. I
know American soldiers pretty well. I do not know what they sang when
the _Tuscania_ went down, but I am glad to add my picture to the other
and to say that I for one heard a crowd of American gunners singing
"Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me Over Life's Tempestuous Sea." The mothers
and fathers of America must know that the average American boy will
have the lighter songs at the end of his lips, but buried down deep in
his heart there is a feeling of reverence for the old hymns, and
whether he sings them aloud or not they are there singing in his heart;
and sometimes, under circumstances such as I have described, he sings