By rights Miss Lane and her companions should not have been taking chances on a transport at all. She should have been crossing the Atlantic in a stately white-painted hospital ship, with the Red Cross emblazoned on its sides, immune by all the laws of God and Man from hostile attack. But the Red Cross makes the Hun see red. Therefore it is found safer in these days to adjust life-jackets over the splints and bandages of wounded men and send them across the water, together with the indomitable sisterhood which tends them, protected by something that makes a more intelligible appeal to _Kultur_ than the mere symbol of Christianity. “It was something fierce,” repeated Boone Cruttenden. “Tell me!” commanded Miss Lane, with an air of authority which Boone found extremely attractive. “Well, in the training-camps the main proposition was to make the boys understand what they were there for. They were full of enthusiasm, but very few of them had taken any interest in the early part of the war, and we were all a long way from Europe, anyhow. They were willing enough to fight, but naturally they wanted to know what they were fighting for. Even when we told them, they weren’t too wise. Two or three men of my company could neither read nor write; another man knew the name of his home town, but not the name of his State. The map of Europe was nothing in his young life. Then, lots of them thought we were going to fight the Yankees again, and whip them this time!” Boone’s eyes flashed, and for a moment he forgot all about European complications. He was his father’s son all through. But a certain tensity in the atmosphere recalled him to realities. “I guess you aren’t a Southerner?” he observed apologetically. “Massachusetts,” replied Miss Lane coldly. Boone Cruttenden offered a laboured expression of regret, and proceeded: “Then they didn’t like saluting, or obeying orders on the jump. Neither did I, for that matter. It seemed undemocratic.” “So it is,” affirmed Miss Lane sturdily. “Well, I don’t know. We certainly made much quicker progress with our training once we had gotten the idea. Our instructors were very particular about it, too—both French and British. There was an English sergeant—well, the boys used to come running a hundred yards to see him salute an officer. I tell you, it tickled them to death, at first. Next thing, they were all trying to do it too.” “What was it like?” Boone rose from his seat upon the deck, stiffened his young muscles, and offered a very creditable reproduction of the epileptic salute of the British Guardsman. “Like that,” he said. “I’m not surprised they ran,” commented Miss Lane.