He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two assistants turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch. After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their journey back by train and steamer--the two men in dungarees and life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they wear on destroyers--was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is passed up here. Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own. "There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the place. There was a little square there with little cafes all around the square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee." "So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was--only a little corner of France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little place after our week to sea. "And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all saying, but I was one brave man--we were all brave men, there was no doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up and gave me a bunch of flowers." He pulled out some kind of a faded flower and sighed. "She was about eight years old." "No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster--he stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit--said: "Yes, sir, a great life if we don't weaken." "What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute since we left our ship." THE 343 STAYS UP Most shore-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers, would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim and floppety-like. But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They have tried them out and know. You take a destroyer in a ninety-mile breeze of wind, put her stern to it, give her five or six knots' headway, and there she'll lay till the North Atlantic blows dry. And that is not their only quality. Speed, of course; but not that either. They have a way of staying up after being cut up. There was that one which was of the first to cross over for the U-boat hunting game. One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those little collisions are bound to occur.