"They say it is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same match, but I think it is good luck for me. I used to do it frequently with my flying partners in France and four of them have been killed, but I am still alive." "That makes it all right for you," said Kirby, "but it makes it look bad for Gibbons and myself. But nothing is going to happen. I don't believe in superstitions." That night after dinner Dugan and I took a brisk walk around the darkened promenade deck of the _Laconia_. The night was very dark, a stiff wind was blowing and the _Laconia_ was rolling slightly in the trough of the waves. Wet from spray, we returned within and in one of the corridors met the Captain of the ship. I told him that I would like very much to have a look at his chart and learn our exact location on the ocean. He looked at me and laughed because that was a very secret matter. But he replied: "Oh, you would, would you?" and his voice carried that particular British intonation that seemed to say, "Well it is jolly well none of your business." Then I asked him when he thought we would land in Liverpool. "I really don't know," said the ship's commander, and then, with a wink, he added, "but my steward told me that we would get in Tuesday evening." Kirby and I went to the smoke room on the boat deck well to the stern of the ship. We joined a circle of Britishers who were seated in front of a coal fire in an open hearth. Nearly every one in the lighted smoke room was playing cards, so that the conversation was practically confined to the mentioning of bids and the orders of drinks from the stewards. "What do you think are our chances of being torpedoed?" was the question I put before the circle in front of the fireplace. The deliberative Mr. Henry Chetham, a London solicitor, was the first to answer. "Well," he drawled, "I should say about four thousand to one." Lucien J. Jerome of the British Diplomatic Service, returning with an Ecuadorian valet from South America, advanced his opinion. I was much impressed with his opinion because the speaker himself had impressed me deeply. He was the best monocle juggler I had ever met. In his right eye he carried a monocle without a rim and without a ribbon or thread to save it, should it ever have fallen from his eye. Repeatedly during the trip, I had seen Mr. Jerome standing on the hurrideck of the _Laconia_ facing the wind but holding the glass disk in his eye with a muscular grip that must have been vise-like. I had even followed him around the deck several times in a desire to be present when the monocle blew out, but the British diplomatist never for once lost his grip on it. I had come to the opinion that the piece of glass was fixed to his eye and that he slept with it. After the fashion of the British Diplomatic Service, he expressed his opinion most affirmatively.