He helped me up. My heart was thumping like a trip-hammer in my breast. I could not--I could not--_could not_ jump. He drew me down suddenly. I lost my footing and plunged after him. The water closed over me. It seemed hours before I came to the top. For a long time I could not move. At length I began to swim. I knew enough to get as far away as I could from the suction that would draw me as the ship sank. Three hours later patrols picked us up. And yet, I love the water. If I am ashore and cannot sleep, I pretend my room is a cabin and that I am on a quietly rocking sea. That is why I entered the Navy nurse corps of my country when she declared war on Germany. So I have served under three flags since war was declared, and at last--at last I am under my own! GUNNER'S MATE M'QUIRE SPEAKS: "ABANDON SHIP!" ME father was always talkin' about the old country. Sure and he said there was nothin' in the whole of America to compare with a corner of County Cork! We kids used to poke fun at him, but I'm confessin' it made us kinder hanker to see that land ourselves. He was after claimin' that the grass was greener there than anywhere else on earth and the sky bluer. As a kid I planned to run away and ship over there just to see if the old man was givin' it to us straight. But it was to Canada I drifted, and, because I have more inches than most men, the Northwest Mounted sent me an engraved invitation askin' me to join them, which I did for six years. Sure, it's a great way to spend your days, ridin' through snow and ice or mud and mosquitoes--accordin' to the season--after the gang of outlaws runnin' loose up there. But it was always worryin', the wife was, for fear I couldn't shoot quick enough and they'd get the drop on me. She'd tell me that it was the kid she was considerin'--she wasn't wantin' to bring him up without a father. She'd say he was too big a handful for her to manage, then get around me by claimin' he was a chip off the old block all right--all right. So I give up me post in the Northwest and settled down in Winnipeg. Then the war came and I could see reasons all over the place for me joinin' up at once. First of all, though me country was America, me home was in Canada and I knew that nine-tenths of the Canucks would be friends of mine. Then secondly, wasn't I Irish, which meant gettin' into any scrap that was goin', so help me? Well, the wife held me back at the start. She kept coaxin' me to bide a bit. She argued the States wasn't in trouble yet, so I listened with one ear, but with the other I was hearin' from all sides about the greatest free-for-all fight in the world's history, and I knew that me, Patrick M'Quire, had no business to be standin' by. [Illustration: "Gas Masked," the men in the trenches throw hand grenades.]