All sorts of passenger ships were pressed into service--the Holyhead-North Wall steamers, the Fishguard boats, the Channel packets, vessels plying between Harwich and the Hook of Holland, Antwerp, and Hamburg, and many others. One Atlantic liner carried three thousand men on a single trip. When the soldiers were on board, the transports steamed off, and not even the captains knew the port to which they were to sail until they were ten miles out at sea. Then they opened sealed envelopes, and for the first time knew their destination. Think of the foresight and arrangement needed to engage all these ships and send them to their proper stations at the right time and in the right order without confusion and delay. But this was not all. Arrangements had to be made for the troops to be landed at the various French ports, and to be encamped until they could be carried by rail to the front. Some of our officers were sent across to France before the troops arrived to prepare for their coming; and French officers came to England to arrange matters on this side. Everything was done according to a carefully-thought-out plan, and it worked as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. Long before the troops landed, enormous quantities of stores had been shipped to the French ports, so that depôts for the supply of the army might be established. Our troops were landed on the Continent at the French ports of Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. All day long, and all night too, streams of transports crossed and recrossed the Channel. The weather was perfect, and the men were packed on board the ships like Bank Holiday trippers. They suffered no discomfort, for the passage did not in any case occupy more than about fifteen hours. Many of the men were surprised to find that no armed vessels accompanied them as an escort. British warships, however, were keeping their Watch on the Brine, though the soldiers could not see them. A squadron of cruisers patrolled the narrow seas between the North Foreland and the French coast, and thus closed the North Sea entrance to the Channel. Aeroplanes and a naval airship hovered above the same waters, keeping a bright lookout for enemy craft. It is said that the crew of one seaplane engaged in this work did a most daring deed in mid-air. Something went wrong with the propeller, and it had to be changed. The pilot thought he would be obliged to descend for the purpose, but two of the crew offered to do the work in the air. They climbed out on to the bracket carrying the propeller, and actually changed the blade while soaring two thousand feet above the sea! [Illustration: A daring feat in mid-air. (_From the picture by Cyrus Cuneo._)]