So as to be able to do justice to all that fortune bestowed upon us, an extra meal or two had to be tucked in between the usual ones. So, with our afternoon coffee we now had chocolate or bonbons. For the smokers there were more than 250,000 cigarettes stored away, and when, in the evening, they had been passed around, the deck looked as though several hundred fireflies were flitting about it. * * * * * So we spent the passing days, while certain death lurked round about us. In sixteen ships our enemies were burning their coal, and racking their brains in vain attempt to catch us. (Here the Lieutenant-Captain of _The Flying Dutchman_ narrates the adventures of those wonderful days; how they kept the enemy seas fraught with danger; how they were hunted through the oceans; how they lived their gay life of "gentlemen buccaneers," knowing that each day brought them nearer to death and the bottom of the seas. He describes vividly "Our Baptism by Fire;" he tells how they torpedoed the Russian destroyer _Schemtschuk_; how they fought the French gunboat _D'Iberville_; how they sunk the French destroyer _Mousquet_; how they wrapped the French dead in the French flag and buried them with naval honors in the sea; until the last fight of the _Emden_ when she met her champion, the Anglo-Australian cruiser _Sydney_ and went down gloriously in the Indian Ocean. The Lieutenant-Captain's description of this last fight is one of the classics of the Great War.) FOOTNOTE: [2] All numerals relate to the stories herein told--not to the chapters in the book. "THE WAY OF THE CROSS"--A TRAGEDY OF THE RUSSIANS _The Millions Who Have Become Beggars_ _Told by V. Doroshevitch, Famous Russian Journalist_ This is probably the first piece of Russian War literature translated into English. It presents the terrible picture of the Russian and Polish fugitives flying from the German invasion in the autumn of 1915. The narrator is a famous Russian journalist, who first contributed his experiences to the _Russkol Slovl_. He went from Moscow to meet the incoming flood of refugees and then passed through to the rear of the Russian Army. At first he met the survivors who were forced ahead in the procession; afterwards they came thicker and thicker until they were a moving wall. He tells how they camped in the forests, how they died by the way, how they put up their crosses by the side of the road, how they sold their horses and abandoned their carts, how they starved, how they suffered. His articles have been collected by Stephen Graham and published in book form by _G. P. Putnam's Sons_: Copyright 1916. These breathless, desperate stories breathe a tender love. The style is typically Slavic and has been preserved in the excellent translations. A single typical story is here told of "The Desolation of Roslavl" by permission of the publishers.