A stalwart man may tumble down three flights of stairs and escape without a broken neck, but he is bound to be considerably shaken up. This was painfully the case with a yacht which had been kept going month in and month out, the fires drawn from under her boilers only when she positively declined to make steam enough and was in a mood to protest against such unfair treatment. That December hurricane had been a bruising, almost fatal experience, and the repairs made at Lisbon could not be called final. As a ship, however, the _Corsair_ had strongly survived the ordeal, and soon she began to resume the semblance of a shapely, sea-going yacht. The graceful bowsprit was restored to the clipper stem, the deck cleared of gun mountings, and the overhang was no longer cluttered with the gear of the depth bombs. Chief Engineer Hutchison returned to his own engine-room, and there was clangor and clatter as gangs of mechanics repaired, replaced, and tuned up machinery which had been driven to the limit of endurance. The _Corsair’s_ steaming record in foreign service had amounted to 49,983.6 miles from June, 1917, to December, 1918, when she ceased cruising to spend her time in English ports and at Queenstown. The distance, by months, was as follows: 1917: June 3244.4 miles July 3358.7 August 3441.5 September 3343.7 October 2994.4 November 3045.6 December 557.1 (Engine counter disabled in hurricane) 1918: January 880.9 miles (at Lisbon) February 2635.8 March 2519 April 1279.3 May 3554.5 June 3823.8[7] July 3609.8[7] August 4300[7] September 4027[7] October 1155.7 (Repairs) November 1030.4 December 1182 On July 31st, less than two months after being placed out of commission as a naval vessel, the _Corsair_ hoisted the Commodore’s flag of the New York Yacht Club. Trim and immaculate, she proceeded to her anchorage at Glen Cove, to await cruising orders. There were differences, however, and the _Corsair_ was not the same as of old. Freshly painted, the hue of her funnel and hull was the gray of the Navy. For a season, at least, the glistening black of her hull was not to be restored. It seemed more fitting, somehow, that in this way she should recall her long service in helping guard the road to France. Upon her funnel were two service chevrons. The regulations awarded a stripe for the first three months overseas and another for a full year thereafter, until the date of the armistice. The decks were scraped and holystoned and spotless, but where the guns had been there were wooden plugs to mark the half-circles of the mounts, and the pine planking was scarred where cases of shells had been dragged to be ready for the swift team-work of the agile gun crews. These, too, were marks of honor which it seemed a pity to obliterate. They signified that the _Corsair_ was something more than a yacht.