ACROSS THE EQUATOR WITH THE AMERICAN NAVY 



583 



1 f 



A KITE BALLOON ATTACHED TO THE BATTLESHIP 



SPOTTING PRACTICE 



Official Photograph, U. S. Navy 

 'PENNSYLVANIA," USED FOR 



ter to the wind, and the unfortunate 

 boats, pulled down to the agonizing 

 twelve knots an hour, were stumbling 

 and swinging helplessly. 



One could imagine how the green 

 water spouted over their bridges and 

 hissed down the engine-room hatches, 

 and what a foul smell of oil and bilge 

 and stale food and cigarettes and pipes 

 and perhaps a few oranges (there are 

 folk who hold that an orange is some- 

 times a help in seasickness) was battened 

 inside those airless cabins ; for when a 

 destroyer gets away from port on any- 

 thing but a painted ocean all apertures 

 must be stopped against the water. It 

 spurts through every keyhole. 



LOYALTY TO HIS CRAET A BOATMAN'S 

 CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC 



Yet no one belonging to the boats 

 would think of leaving. The men come 

 through a seven-day run looking <as 

 though stricken by the wrath of Heaven. 



On board the larger ships one might 

 hardly know there had been wind or sea, 

 but the men tumbling in a destroyer have 

 been unable to bathe or shave or sleep. 



Their food has been sandwiches, which 

 they have only been able to eat by hook- 

 ing one arm around a stanchion. They 

 are covered with bruises, except where 

 the flesh has been so indurated and 

 woodened that it can bruise no more. 



Their eyes are ringed with rime and 

 red as those of an angry parrot. Yet 

 they are so constituted that to tell about 

 the boats they can go without food, sleep, 

 or other necessaries. Their eyes shine 

 and they reach for your arm to shake 

 you into an appreciation of their pets. 



"Come with me," said the engineer of 

 the destroyer squadron at the end of a 

 particularly nauseous four-day wallow 

 on the Black Haii'k. ''I'll give you a 

 treat." 



Observation had made me somewhat 

 skeptical of the potentialities of enjoy- 



