The _Pamir_ left New York the same day that Flannigan sailed. We took on there a fellow from the Munitions Department, a civil engineer who had gone over to America to take charge of orders for munitions, steel, etc., and who seized the chance to accompany the steel bars whose manufacture he had been supervising in the factory. His name is Mousseaux. He had had nothing to do with the sea before the war, but has now made several trips, to Serbia, Russia, Spain, and America, so is not altogether a mug. He told us a lot of scandals about munitions, the markets, orders, and the Boches, and I reckon that Mousseaux also thinks that if we are victorious it will be in spite of ourselves. He’s a sharp one, a big, blond, blue-eyed Norman. In short, what he says, goes. He looked a bit scared when he saw that the _Pamir_ had neither wireless, guns, nor anything else against submarines. But as he had telegraphed from inland that he would take passage with us and as he arrived the morning we sailed, he wouldn’t back out, but took things as he found them, especially as he was going to gain four or five days thereby. Ships don’t sail every day to France now. Moreover, it was his twelfth voyage since the beginning of the war and he had been on boats without wireless or guns eight times. Like all those who roll around at sea, he thinks as we do, and we soon agreed that the Merchant Service of the Allies is practically offered at present to the Boche submarines and that it can’t go on for ever. He, who is an engineer, assures us that the cost of fitting wireless on all the boats would be slight and that the price of one big well-loaded ship, sunk because it had no warning, would cover the cost of wireless for at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred cargo-steamers. Mousseaux adds that what’s wanted is a man of push and go to compel the owners, the chiefs of the Admiralty, and everybody else to agree and that then it would take only about a month. But now, no one dares to act on his own responsibility and it’s going to cost the country tens of millions. Fourgues and Mousseaux almost fell out when Mousseaux asked what was the use of putting guns aft and none forward on the cargo boats that had them. Fourgues asked him what he meant by that. “Yes,” answered Mousseaux, “I have been on several boats which had one gun--behind.” “Well,” said Fourgues; “they couldn’t have asked the advice of the captain. But if they ever give me a gun, it will be surrounded by a lot of jossers from the Navy who will put it aft because the policy of the Entente is to be on the defensive as regards submarines.” “But, skipper, the only way to bash them is to attack--fight them the moment you meet them.”