ACROSS THE EQUATOR WITH THE AMERICAN XAVY 



621 



"He was a cross-eyed bull," was the 

 explanation that came up to us. 



THE TAXI CHAUFFEURS WENT ON A 

 STRIKE 



Even the strike of the taxi chauffeurs 

 did not disturb the happiness of the sail- 

 ors. Ordinarily the chief delight of the 

 seaman ashore is to pack as many ex- 

 emplars of his profession as possible in 

 some sort of a cab and then go careering. 

 But the pilots of the four-seatos, who had 

 contentedly served the Limans at a rate 

 of one dollar and a half an hour, Ameri- 

 can money, for any sort of an automobile 

 that would go, took umbrage at the act 

 of the government in advertising in all 

 the papers that the rate was one dollar 

 and a half and no more, and advising the 

 Americans to resist four-seato aggression. 



Therefore they went on strike. They 

 were still willing to haul a Peruvian at 

 the old rate, but if they could not gouge 

 the Yankees they would have nothing to 

 do with them. It did not annoy the boys. 



"We've seen taxi chauffeurs before," 

 they said. 



Hard work began with the departure 

 of the fleet from Callao and the resump- 

 tion of maneuvers, when the Pacific fleet 

 joined those of the Atlantic squadron in 

 those tragic waters which saw the crush- 

 ing of Craddock's gallant British squad- 

 ron by Admiral Von Spee's ships. 



But it was not only the constant march 

 and countermarch of the ships that was 

 watched by the admirals of the fleet. 

 The radio was continually crackling with 

 admonitions to the engineer officer of this 

 ship or that. 



ENGINEERING WITHOUT SMOKE 



First-rate engineering to a landsman 

 means engineering without a breakdown, 

 but on the sea it likewise means engineer- 

 ing without smoke. A plume of black 

 can be seen by an alert enemy a score of 

 miles away. 



In the thirty-odd days I spent on board 

 the flagship Pennsylvania I did not see 

 enough smut come from her funnels to 

 daub a lady's handkerchief. There were 

 other ships which smudged the skies like 

 so many factories. 



Everything else is subordinate to 

 shooting, on board an American battle- 



ship, however. Xo one can know 

 whether our men are actually better 

 marksmen than the gunners of other 

 navies, but they assuredly believe they are. 



The gun crews watch and gossip at 

 target practice, and between times prac- 

 tice speed in loading and firing without 

 orders from the officers. 



One of the ships of the American bat- 

 tle fleet was once classed as a bad ship 

 because her captain was a notorious sun- 

 downer — which may mean that he was 

 tyrannical and unfair and may only mean 

 that he was disliked. 



The captain who replaced him estab- 

 lished a "meritorious mast," so that men 

 might be called in front of their fellows 

 for praise as well as for blame. Then 

 he began to preach better shooting. 



"There isn't a better ship in the fleet," 

 said the man who ought to know. "His 

 men work with the guns all day long." 



WHERE THE PROBLEM OF AIMING THE 

 BIG GUNS IS WORKED OUT 



Therefore I found occasional enter- 

 tainment in that perspiring center known 

 as the plotting-room. Here young 

 mathematicians juggle with curves and 

 logarithms to discover precisely how to 

 hit the enemy's ship with the first salvo. 



If they work out this problem accu- 

 rately by the aid of adding-machines and 

 established formulas, in the midst of 

 jangling telephones and whistling speak- 

 ing-tubes, the enemy's ship goes out of 

 action in a beautiful burst of black and 

 red. Otherwise the spotters in the fight- 

 ing tops and in the ship-planes must take 

 up the work of finding the range. 



In getting the range, practically the 

 only factors really considered are the 

 presumed distance between the two ships. 

 the speed at which each is going, the 

 nature of the wind and the density of the 

 atmosphere, and, last of all, the tempera- 

 ture of the powder-magazine. It seems 

 almost too easy. 



Upon returning to Panama the fleet 

 paid its visit of ceremony to the ruins of 

 Old Panama, precisely as it had to Pi- 

 zarro's bones in Lima. The navy's look- 

 see manuals informed the men that Sir 

 Henry Morgan sacked the town in 167T, 

 after struggling through the jungle for 

 da vs. 



