it.  I never thought any ship could stand the bludgeoning she got.  It seemed as if every rivet must shear, every frame and stanchion crush, under the impact of the Juggernaut seas that hurtled into her.  As a thoroughbred horse starts and trembles under the touch of the whip, so she reared and trembled, only to bury herself again in the roaring Niagara of water.  Oh, you thoroughbred high-tensile steel! blue-blooded aristocrat among metals; Bethlehem or Midvale may claim you—­you are none the less worthy of the Milan casque, the Damascus blade, your forefathers!  Verily, I believe you hold on by sheer nerve, when by all physical laws should buckle or bend to the shock!

[Sidenote:  Torpedo detonators spilt on deck.]

And so we kept on.  Don’t you know, how in the stories it is always in a terrific gale that the caged lion or gorilla or python breaks loose and terrorizes the ship?  We don’t sport a menagerie on the ——­, but I did pick up the contents of the dry gun-cotton case, which had broken and spilt the torpedo detonators around on deck contiguous to the hot radiator!  And, of course, the decks below were knee-deep in books, clothes, dishes, etc., complicated in some compartments by a foot or two of oil and water.

[Sidenote:  Soundings and landmarks.]

Well, the next day we made a little more, and the seas were only gigantic, not titanic.  The oil was holding out better, too, as we struck a better grade in some of our tanks, and I saw that we had a fighting chance of making it.  By night I felt almost confident we could, and I really slept some.  Next day I expected to make land, but, of course, had little idea how far I might really be from my reckoning.  Nevertheless, we sighted ——­ Light about where I expected to, and laid a course from there into the harbor.  It was a rather thick, foggy day, and pretty soon I noted a cunning little rock or two, dead ahead, where they didn’t by any means belong.  So I rather hurriedly arrested further progress, took soundings, and bearings of different landmarks, and found that we were some twenty-five miles from our reckoning—­so far, in fact, as to have picked up the next light-house instead of the one we thought.

After this ’twas plain sailing, though I had never been into that port before.  Made it about noon, took possession of a convenient mooring-buoy inside the breakwater—­which buoy I found out later was sacred to the French flag-ship or somebody like that—­called on our Admiral there, and was among friends.  Yes, by heck, I let ’em buy me a drink at the club—­I needed it!  Had oil enough left for just about an hour more!

Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1918.

* * * * *

While the great campaigns were being waged on the western fronts, there was being carried on in a more remote part of the world a series of operations which involved as hard fighting and as many difficulties as were encountered in any other field of action.  The campaigns in East Africa which resulted in driving the Germans from their former colonies are described in the following narrative.