with would be the sort of moist feeling about the pile-driver that knocked you over the side. So it looks like the rub is going to come in getting the _Lymptania_ to content herself with a speed at which--well, at which you can detect some slight difference between a head-sea and a brick wall from the bridge of the destroyer doing the butting. Whatever that proves to be, you'll have such a chance as you may never get again to see what stuff your Uncle Sam's destroyers are made of." We made screening formation as soon as we were well clear of the barraged waters of the estuary, though the sea we had to traverse before entering the open Atlantic was considered practically empty of menace. The _Lymptania_, making astonishingly little smoke for a coal-burner, worked up to somewhere near her top speed in a very short time; but, with the light-running seas well abaft the beam, the destroyers cut their zigzags round and about her with many knots in reserve. The big liner, with much experience to her credit, knew precisely what to do and how to do it, and the whole machine of the convoy worked as though pulled by a single string. Her very movements themselves seemed to give the various units of the escort their cues, for, though she steered a course so devious and irregular that no submarine could have possibly told how to head in order to waylay her, she was never "uncovered." Ahead and abreast of her, going their own way individually, but still conforming their general movements to hers, the destroyers wove their practically impenetrable screen. Whatever there was ahead, it was ideal destroyer weather for the moment, and all hands came swarming out on the dry sun-warmed deck to make the most of it while it lasted. An importunate whine from a nest of arms and legs sprawling abreast the midships torpedo-tubes attracted my attention for a moment as I sauntered aft to see what was afoot, and presently the rattle of dice on the deck and an imploring "Come on, you Seven!" told me they were "shooting Craps," with, I shortly discovered, bars of milk chocolate and sticks of chewing-gum for stakes. Several others were playing "High, Low, Jack," and here and there--using elbows and knees to keep the bellying pages from blowing away--were little knots clustered about the latest Sunday Supplement from New York.