There were still more thrilling things in store for us. We saw the beam of a searchlight from Fort Scott playing across the Golden Gate. We expected that when we came within its range, it would lift and let us pass. Instead, its beam was turned full upon us, and stayed on us, lighting up the whole vessel till it looked like a floating hotel drifting out to sea. It must have been a wonderful sight from the hills of San Francisco. We went into the smoking-room, where the steward had hung bath towels over the ports to conceal all lights, and lit cigarettes with due precautions against showing the flash of the match. We had to go somewhere to get out of the glare of that searchlight. Soon we felt the heave of the Pacific under us, the engines settled down to their work to twist behind the miles between us and Vladivostok, and we were off to the war, feeling as if we had stolen somebody’s chickens. We had gotten away about as secretly as a three-ring circus. III JAPAN TO VLADIVOSTOK Our transports put in at Hakodate for coal. From San Francisco, something had been wrong with the _Logan’s_ engines. What it was, she would neither tell by wireless, nor signal by wig-wag. We heard everything from a story that German spies had tangled fish-nets in her propeller, to a yarn that bearings for her engines had been forgotten on the dock. But the result was, that the _Logan_, which had been armed especially to protect us, lolled behind, at times dropping below the horizon, and we slopped around in the Pacific with steerage way, waiting for her to catch up. This continued day after day, and we burned deeply into our coal supply. For some reason, we could not get enough coal in Hakodate, and after a couple of days, pulled out for Otaru, Japan, where we stopped another two days, and went ashore again. When we had exhausted the sights of the small city, some of us went on to Sapporo by train, and saw that provincial capital. While we were ashore, a typhoon came up, and the _Logan_ dragged her anchors, and came near to piling up on the breakwater. Several Japanese coaling the transports from barges, were drowned. On our return from Sapporo we found the roofs of Otaru rather dislocated, a high wind still blowing, and no chance to get back to ship that night. So some of us slept in the native hotel of the town, and enjoyed the novelty of sitting on the floor for a Japanese breakfast, while cross crows in a garden cawed at us and the gold fish swam in the pretty pool of the court. The rickshawmen gleaned fortunes from nearly a thousand soldiers on holiday with plenty of money to spend.