It was now full speed ahead on a zigzag course. We were in the most deadly submarine infested zone of the ocean. Only yesterday the Susquehanna had been torpedoed in these very waters, and, no doubt, the same evil periscopes were watching us now from beyond yonder kopje of a wave! Our temples throbbed poundingly; our throats grew dry, our eyes stared straight ahead--the same psychic phenomena we were to note in ourselves, even more accentuated, later in the trenches. What a prize we would be--to sink the largest ship afloat, with the greatest human cargo, 13,000 souls, that ever put to sea! It was, as it were, an old-time, nerve-racking ninth inning at the White Sox grounds! A clean single will tie, a double will beat us. Uncle Sam's Navy is in the box; Von Tirpitz's best sticker is at the bat. Two strikes have been called. What will the next be? A sudden hush grips the watching thousands. Here it comes--the batter swings with terrific force--"Strike three, you're out!" and proudly our gallant Armada sweeps into the welcoming and sheltering harbor of Brest! CHAPTER IV BREST--ANCEY-LE-FRANC Vive la France! With all the emotion that must have thrilled the heart of Lafayette, sailing up the Chesapeake to Washington's assistance at Yorktown, we gazed on the rugged coast of Brittany. Our convoy alone, if you will, more than compensated, in point of _number of troops_ at least, for the 20,000 who wore the fleur-de-lis at the surrender of Cornwallis. Mere _number_ of troops, however, was not the question--it was all we then needed. France would, no doubt, have sent us more in 1783, even as we would have sent more to her in the world war, had there been the need. Brest was the only harbor along the western France coast with sufficient depth of water to accommodate the Leviathan; and, inside her breakwater, on Sunday, August 10, we dropped anchor. This harbor and city, with a history rich in recorded and traditional lore, antedated the Christian era. The Phonecian, the Carthaginian, the Roman, and the Frank, had each, in turn, left upon its sheltering bay and rock hewn hills the impress of his generation. Apart and aloof from the beaten paths that lead from London to Paris it held, through the centuries, "the even tenor of its way." Here had the painter ever found color and form for his canvas; the romanticist, theme and character for his story. In the deep-voiced caverns of these towering cliffs lived the Pirates of Penzance. The solitude of yonder St. Malo inspired Chateaubriand with his immortal "Monks of the West"; and Morlix, just east of Brest, was, in days of peace, the dwelling place of peerless Marshal Foch. By nightfall all the troops had been ferried to the wharfs and formed by companies in the railroad yards along the water front.