Chapter XII: “allo, Sammee!”

Joe had all the luck that day, for no liberty was granted until late afternoon, and Steve had to remain aboard the destroyer and see from there what he could of the doings ashore until most of the doings were done. But Joe got off in the motor dingey when the junior luff went ashore, through a bit of good luck, and although he had to remain in the boat with the rest there were things to be seen from the landing. The third troop-ship was entering the lock as the _Warren’s_ boat bumped her fender, and the crowd in the street alongside cheered as spiritedly as though they had not already welcomed two ships in such manner. Cries of “Allo, Sammee!” punctuated the shouting. On the decks that towered almost overhead the smiling American lads cheered with a fine abandon and tried out their French. Gifts of all sorts were tossed from street to decks: candy and cigarettes in abundance, and even fruit. Slowly the water rose in the lock and then the upper gate swung open and the transport passed through with much shouting, much hustling of giant hawsers. Already the next ship was nosing at the lower lock, and, when the water level had sunk again, she swung magnificently in, a veritable floating city inhabited by nearly three thousand eager-eyed, hat-swinging boys in khaki. Her decks were thronged, the rails lined four and five deep and even the lower rigging was crowded with olive-drab and blue. When the big ship was recognised as a former German liner, one who had borne the name of a member of the royal house of Hohenzollern――they could still read the name although its letters had been removed――the throng cheered louder than ever. With lines of men carrying the great hawsers she moved slowly on until she filled the lock from gate to gate, with her topmost decks towering high above the surrounding buildings. The lock gate was closed and the hawsers were made fast, while from street and decks and every available spot on shore and aboard ship a cheer went up to the blue sky. And then there was a scurrying and pushing on the forward deck and the band took its place there. The tumult died away and the leader raised his baton high. A pause, and almost a silence over the great throng, and then the music swelled forth and one by one the boys in khaki stiffened and stood at attention and, below, every Frenchman raised a hand in the military salute and stood so while the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner” swept out over the silent throng.

When the last note had died trembling on the air the silence held for a good minute, and then wave after wave of cheering arose and passed along the street and was thrown back by the buildings and crashed up against the great hull of the liner. For many minutes it went on, until the leader again held his baton aloft. Silence fell once more, while hands again went to salute, but this time the silence lasted but a moment. Here――there――on all sides voices joined the music, ever swelling until the stately tumult of it was heard far across the bay. On the transport the soldiers sang, too, or lacking the words, hummed. And so for the first time in history an American band played and American soldiers sang the Marseillaise in France!

It was early the next morning that those on the destroyers heard the bugle blow in the upper basin and knew that the United States Expeditionary Force was setting foot on French soil. At moments, from the _Warren_, they could glimpse lines of moving olive-drab figures on shore. Most of the fellows sought and obtained liberty that morning, but by the time they were on the scene half of the big troop-ships had discharged their quotas and the great army camp outside the town that had been for more than a fortnight awaiting occupancy was at last a soldier city. Steve and Joe stood for a good hour in the shadows of the basin-side buildings and, pushed and jostled good-naturedly by a huge throng of onlookers, watched squad after squad of their brothers-in-arms march down the gangplanks, fall into rank in the street and go sweeping off across the bridge with a light springy step that was fine to see. Many times the two boys shouted a greeting to a smiling man in the ranks merely because their eyes and his met understandingly and they saw his face light as he recognised the Navy blue. Once only did either of them glimpse an acquaintance, although it seemed that they must know personally every one of the khaki-clad fellows that passed, so familiar were the lean, cheerful, alert countenances. Up through the town they went in columns of fours, trailing out like a long dust-brown snake, and as one regiment disappeared another followed in its track.

Once Joe drew Steve’s attention to a squad of grey-clad German prisoners who were being marched down the basin to the coal-yards. Six French soldiers carrying long rifles with fixed bayonets were in charge and they didn’t permit any loitering. But even so it was possible to read the perplexed looks of the prisoners as they found themselves confronted by the line on line of American soldiers, troops which they had been assured over and over again by their government would never reach Europe!

By a little after twelve o’clock the last of the contingent had marched away over the rise and the great ships were empty of khaki and ready for re-coaling and the return voyage. Joe had been especially interested by the Marines and had watched them rather enviously, confiding to Steve that he guessed he wished he had enlisted there instead of in the seaman branch. “They’re going to get right into the thick of it, I’ll bet,” he said. “Besides, Steve, land duty gives a fellow a chance to get over his seasickness sometimes.”

“Huh, all those chaps are going to do is guard duty, I guess,” derided Steve. “If that’s your idea of a Summer vacation it isn’t mine, son. I’d rather be where there’s something doing.”

“I know,” sighed Joe, “but sometimes I wish they’d put the _Warren_ on wheels and send her ashore. It’s the eternal rolling that has me beat.”

“Shucks, Joe, you’re doing fine! Why, you weren’t sick once this trip.”

“N-no, but there were lots of times when――when I could have been! And I’m always scared that I will be. Well, if I can’t stick it out I’ll try the Army. I guess there’s some place I can wiggle into.”

“Oh, don’t be a piker! Stick to the Navy, old scout. It’s the only real thing.”

“Only _reel_ thing, I guess you mean,” sighed the other. “There’s Tommy and Jack over there. Let’s go over.”

With Truso and Higgins they saw the town and ate a most remarkable dinner at a queer little café that was crowded with soldiers and sailors of half a dozen nations. They made the acquaintance of an Italian non-com officer――they never could agree as to his exact rank――who talked surprisingly good English, a fact later explained when he mentioned having been a produce commission merchant in New York until the war broke out. He asked a good many wistful questions about the city of his adoption, many of which the boys were unable to answer. Afterwards he told them a good deal of war news――they had been singularly ignorant of what had been going on during the last month. The King of Greece had abdicated――as Higgins remarked later, without saying a word to them――the United States Liberty Loan had been gloriously oversubscribed: the Italians had taken Corno Cavento from the Austrians (Steve determined to look the place up on the map but never did): an American commission had been sent to Russia. After saying good-bye to their new acquaintance they bought numerous French newspapers which none could read intelligently and reported back on the _Warren_. They had all wanted mightily to go out and see the American camp, but there wasn’t time, and they promised themselves to do it tomorrow. But when the morrow came the _Warren_ was thrusting her knife-edge bow into the green waters three hundred miles away from red-roofed Bordeaux.

They had taken on only enough fuel for a slow return to the base and it was nearly noon on the twenty-ninth when they sighted the Scilly Islands to starboard. Two of the other destroyers accompanied them and stayed in sight until afternoon. Then, when Steve looked for them from the foretop cage, they were gone. The _Warren_ zig-zagged through the Channel mine fields and dropped her hooks in Queenstown Harbour at sunset.

Ashore the next day, they learned that the American and English fleet commanders had forbidden men from the ships to go up to Cork because of the Sinn Fein demonstrations. Consequently they were doomed to make the best of Queenstown, and Queenstown’s best was not very exciting. The town was little more than a single street running along the water and many steep and narrow lanes ascending the hill on which the town was built. The business part seemed to consist principally of hotels and steamship offices and to be inhabited by sailors from the Seven Seas, soldiers, marines and shabbily-clad citizens, whose sole purpose in life was to loaf. But they saw what few sights there were: the big white cathedral on the summit of the hill which has been in course of erection so long that no one appeared to be sure of the date of its beginning. And they ferried across to Monkstown, a whole dozen of them, and saw the castle on the heights that cost but fourpence, as the story goes. They got the narrative from a willing and garrulous old patriarch in return for a shilling. Doubtless they’d have got it with quite as much detail for a sum no larger than the cost of the old castle. Shorn of much verbiage, the story was that back in sixteen hundred and something one John Archdeckan was called to the war in Flanders, and his good wife decided that it would be a fine thing to erect a castle during his absence and have a sort of surprise party when he got back――if he ever did! So she got an army of labourers together and arranged to pay them good wages for the job on condition that they bought all their food, drink and clothing from her. When the castle was finished she cast a balance and made the, to her, annoying discovery that she had come out fourpence shy! Hearn offered the comment that he guessed Mrs. Archdeckan had never really enjoyed her home after that, but another of the party opined that the lady hadn’t got swindled after all because if the worst came to the worst she could have turned it into a fine fire-proof garage. Their guide and informant seemed a trifle peeved at their levity, much of which he fortunately couldn’t understand, and so Tommy Truso tipped him a Canadian dime which pleased him vastly, not knowing, as Tommy remarked with a chuckle, that “the thing’s no good south of Portland, Maine!”

That afternoon mail came aboard and Steve and Joe had letters galore and more newspapers than they would ever have time to read before the war ended, and last, but far from least, a box of eatables. But the letters were the best, for they made home seem for the time very near. Steve received a letter from George Hanford which had been posted from Halifax. Han was on the way over when he wrote. The _Carthage_ was swinging at anchor off Falkland, N. S., awaiting some transports. As the letter was dated the twelfth of June it was more than probable, as Steve and Joe agreed, that the _Carthage_ was now somewhere in British waters.

“It would be dandy to run into old Han some day, wouldn’t it?” exclaimed Joe.

“Yes, if it didn’t sink us,” agreed Steve. “I wouldn’t suggest it to the Old Man, though.”

“You know what I mean,” laughed Joe. “I wonder if there’s any news of his ship around here.”

They didn’t find any, however. The whereabouts and movements of ships were carefully guarded those days. Theoretically at least, the crew of one ship was not supposed to know so much as the name of another even though they happened to be anchored within cable’s length of each other! Joe was assured, however, that some fine day they would come across Han, and when they did――well, there’d be a lot of talking done!

The _Warren_ was to remain four days instead of three at the base this time in order to make up to the men one of the days they had been deprived of before. Hearn was for getting forty-eight hours’ liberty and making a trip to Dublin, but for some reason the Old Man wasn’t agreeable to the idea. There was baseball each afternoon on a make-shift diamond and some exciting contests were pulled off. The _Warren_ took on a team of marines and, with Truso pitching, Joe playing first base and a yeoman named Harris catching, put it all over their opponents. Two days later, however, the _Warren_ had to lower its colours before the better playing of a nine from one of the other destroyers.

Finally at dusk one warm July evening the _Warren’s_ winches rattled, her anchors came up from the mud of the harbour, the twinkling lights of Queenstown dropped astern and she slipped through the net gate and steamed out into the darkness to take up once more the patrol of her particular square section of the ocean, three hundred feet of quivering steel eager for work and danger.