_World_--Copyright 1917 by the John N. Wheeler Syndicate. A few episodes from his adventures are now retold. I--"MY FIRST NIGHT ON GERMAN RAIDER" The first night on board the German raider which had sunk the _Georgic_ (when we were hurled into a sea alive with swimming, drowning horses) was hell. That is the only way to describe it, if you will pardon the expression. At 9 o'clock all lights were put out. Even the tiny bulb that illuminated the compass on the navigating bridge was shielded and not so much as a match was allowed to be struck on the decks. We were shut up in the forecastle, and we either had to go to bed or sit around in the dark. The ship rolled heavily and the propellers raced and pounded as her stern occasionally lifted out of the water because of the high speed at which she was constantly pushed. Nobody knew where we were nor where we were going. With the others, I lay down on a hard, thin mattress, stuffed with excelsior, in the middle of the floor, and envied the men who had bunks or hammocks. Each of us had a shoddy blanket which was as damp as it was dirty and smelly. My bones ached from the cold when at last what seemed an endless night was over. A sailor who had been detailed as a steward for us brought a mixture masquerading under the name of coffee and more of the black bread and beet jam. There seemed to be no end of bread, and Dr. Snider, who had been surgeon on the _Voltaire_, ate chunk after chunk of it. "How can you swallow all that stuff?" I asked him. "When you've been on this d---- ship as long as I have, you'll know," he said. And before I got out of Germany I did. I had no sooner eaten a few scraps of breakfast than the coffee nauseated me as it had the night before, and my frugal meal and I promptly parted company. As I returned to the quarters where the other men were I started to "beef" about my troubles. Immediately they all broke into song. The tune was that of the hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the words were: "Growling, growling, growling! You're always bally well growling. When you're dead and in your grave You'll bally well growl no more!" I didn't quite sense the meaning of it at first, and when they were through singing I started to explain once more that I couldn't stand the coffee out of that infernal, sickening receptacle, looking very much like a wash basin. I hadn't got six words out of my mouth when the song broke out again, and this time the men in the adjacent forecastle room joined in, and I think every English-speaking voice on board the ship was roaring those words. I knew then what it meant, and never after that did I utter one word of complaint. If anybody did, the song was sure to drown his voice. That song might serve a purpose here. At 10 o'clock in the morning we were led to a washroom, four men at a time. All we had was running salt water and no soap. It drove the dirt in further, but nevertheless it was refreshing.