Queer, how you come to love the bobbing little devil. I guess it's human nature. The more cantankerous a proposition is the more you like to handle it. And salt water doesn't hurt you any. Good for you. Don't they give you salt baths and charge you a stiff price? Well, we get the treatment free. Pretty soft, I call it. We had a great crew. I was chief yeoman, with a job of clerk, and in time of action I had to work the range-finder. I was pretty busy, but I did have time to ring in a few laughs at the ship's pet. He was a Swede--Ole Hjalmar, and big! Say, he was eight feet high--or, anyway, six-two, with a voice like a bull. He was mostly ears, and he had blond hair and high cheek bones. His face was red from the high winds. It browns mine, but it made him look like a ripe tomato. He hated his pink cheeks. We used to guy him about them, but most of all we made fun of the big gold rings in his ears, and say, I don't think there was a square inch of him that wasn't tattooed--stars and pigs and anchors and eagles all over him! Education didn't bother him any. The only writing he did in the twenty years' service was to sign his name to his pay checks. But he was always ready with a laugh. He was boatswain's mate and his job was official scrubwoman and then when an officer gave command he had to pass the word. I remember one day we were expecting to make port that afternoon. It was wash-day and as we changed our course it happened that the clothes we had hung out in the sun to dry found themselves in the shade. Our bags were still wet, so Ole was told to pass the word to the men to shift their clothes to the other side of the ship. "Aye, aye, sir," boomed Ole's big bass,--then he gave the command. "All you men who iss got clothes ver de sun isn't iss, put 'em ver de sun iss iss. . . ." Say, that got us! and Ole never did hear the end of "ver de sun iss iss." That was all right, as it turned out, but next time--well, this is what happened. [Illustration: "Boresighting"--a 3-inch gun on board a merchant ship.] We anchored in an English port and like every good "bloomin' bloody Yank," as our British cousins call us, we got out our bats and balls ready to play United States baseball. We had four cracking good teams on the ship. The first and fourth would play, then the second and third. The competition was pretty close and we were tickled to death when the American Consul got a tract of land for us and we went ashore to show those Johnnies a regular game, after watching cricket for an hour or two. Well, after several days of games, some of the men began abusing their shore privileges, and the officers knocked it off and kept us aboard--no liberty at all!