Again, there were a great many rumors regarding the numbers of troops carried by this big transport. We did not want Germany to know how many men we really were shipping, and we rather thought that no one ever could know. An A. P. L. operative was able to make a very close guess under rather singular circumstances. Since he could have done so, perhaps a German spy might have done as much had he an equally sharp wit. This instance really started in a practical joke. The jokers suggested to a certain young husband, who had to sit up late several nights with a crying baby, that he might pass the time counting the cars of troop trains which passed in front of his house. In all seriousness, the young man did do this, checking each car by the bumps it made on the railroad frogs. He really counted in this way with very fair accuracy the number of cars carrying troops for the _Leviathan_’s sailing. As everyone knew about how many troops were in each car, this operative figured that there would be about 12,000 troops. This was reported to the Government, but was never checked out, so that A. P. L. still wants to know whether they were good detectives or not. There was a member of the Division who sold automobile tires. A Naval officer came to him to buy a tire, and wanted to know if the tire could not get to the boat that afternoon. This salesman suggested the next morning at noon. The officer innocently said that he would have sailed by that time. He also named his boat, the _Leviathan_. This salesman asked how it would do to have the tire ready when the ship came back, and asked how long it would be. The officer said sixteen and a half days—which tallied with the former _Leviathan_ record of seventeen days. The salesman also learned that the stop at Bordeaux was from forty to seventy-two hours. Incidentally, he also learned that the boat carried 12,000 troops, had five hundred officers and a crew of fifteen hundred. This figure of 12,000 troops checks perfectly with the A. P. L. estimate made by the baby-carrying member. This tire-hunting officer of the boat also told a great many things which he ought not to have told anyone. He told the means used to protect the _Leviathan_ against U-boats, saying that the ship depended mostly on her speed. He said the ship drew only forty-two feet of water, so it had not been necessary to dredge the channel at Bordeaux. The operative then asked the officer how late he could receive the tire, and was told about two hours before sailing. “You can refer to your local newspapers and figure on fifteen minutes after the tide begins to go out,” he said. This, of course, was so that the boat could get the benefit of the ebb tide in warping out.