Knowing the probability of further engagements in the North Sea, quite a number of wealthy private individuals have interested themselves in the hospitals on the East Coast from north to south. And these persons take especial interest in the trains, many of them making it a point to be at the railroad station whenever a Royal Naval Ambulance train pulls in. What with sick men and accidents, the trains now and again may have a full quota of patients without there having been a fleet engagement. In war time no man who is not physically fit is kept aboard ship, for he may not take up another man's place without being able to perform his work. Exigencies of war have caused the speedy transformation of buildings in many parts of England into hospitals. There also are institutions constructed in temporary form, architecturally not works of art, but wonderfully useful. The surgeons at these latter places have wrought marvels in obtaining good light in the wards and operating-rooms, and creating a comfortable atmosphere in the exteriorly dingy places. The starting-point or headquarters of the ambulance trains is in the South, and when they plough their way North they carry no patients. The complement of these trains is from forty to fifty hands, and they all look upon the train as a ship, and use sailors' terms. It is the "Sick Bay Express." IX. A RUN IN A ROYAL NAVAL AMBULANCE TRAIN I obtained permission to make a "voyage" in an ambulance train. On a grey, drizzling morning one of the Royal Naval trains glided into a siding at Queensferry--a dozen miles from Edinburgh. In less than ten minutes six hefty stretcher-bearers steadily and silently bore the first cot patient from a waiting ambulance to the war-coloured train. Cot then followed cot with precision, only two of the patients being in the open at a time; and as quickly as mortals could accomplish it these cots were set swinging in the "eyes" set for the lanyards. Being about half-past eight o'clock, nobody had much to say. The faces of the sick and wounded bluejackets told you nothing as they lazily gazed around them while being hoisted into the hospital train. They looked like men sewed into white sailcloth sacks. Surgeons, with two and three gold stripes, between which runs the red--blood red, some say--denoting their department in the Navy, glanced occasionally at the patients.