We were steaming around the _Luckenbach_ at twenty knots while we were hailing: this in case the sub took it in her head to pop up again and catch us slowed down. We did slow down and stop when it came time to clear away a whale-boat and send it over to the steamer with our senior watch-officer and the surgeon, with the needful surgical supplies. We continued to steam circles around the steamer all the time they were aboard, with our lookouts keeping eyes skinned for the U-boat. By her manner of shelling the steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling the _Luckenbach_. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again--it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not--but we only sighted it once, and then it did not linger. The sea was growing lumpy when the whale-boat came bouncing back with our senior officer. It was right about the _Luckenbach_ having nine injured, but all would get well. The doctor was looking after them. She was a cotton steamer. The kid who had been hit twice was all right. He was walking around deck with his cap over his port ear and proud as Billy-be-Damn'--three times wounded by German shell fire and got away with it! The fire in the forehold? Most of it was from two old mattresses--at least that was all he found. "Did you put the fire out?" "Yes, sir. The steamer's crew were too tired to do any more hustling around to put any fire out, so we got out a hose and put it out." "How about that bulkhead?" asked the skipper. "He hailed that he didn't think it would stand the strain of steaming." "Maybe so, sir, but I don't agree with him. I don't see how that bulkhead's going to cave in with all those bales of cotton jammed up against it. What the most of them over there are suffering from is the reaction from that three hours of shelling--everything was looking pretty blue to them, sir." "Can he make steam?" "Yes, sir. Their engineer has two ribs busted in and a piece of shrapnel in his neck and part of his foot shot away. But he's all right. He was lying down when I first saw him, cursing the Germans blue. Then he says: 'Put me on my feet, men.' A couple of oilers put him on his feet. I thought he was going to give orders to make steam, but he only wanted to be stood up so as he could curse the Germans a little better. Lying down interfered with his wind. He rolled it out in one steady stream for ten minutes. He was an Italian, or maybe a Spaniard, and his English wasn't perfect, but he could talk like hell. He's all right. He'll get steam up, sir."