“Can’t say that our trip was as bad as it might have been. Course I got out of that hole they stuck us in for sleepin’-quarters and made a bunk upon the second hatch, ’midships. Sundberg and I slept together there and we used to rope ourselves down at night to keep from rollin’ overboard. The eatin’ was rotten for us, but the mules and horses ate pretty fair, that is, all but mine. I had eighteen soft-brained, long-eared mules to feed, and they got so damn mean until they would bite my back when I turned ’round to pick up hay. So I starved ’em a few times just to show ’em who was runnin’ their little boardin’-house. “There wasn’t any amusements on that boat. Not even a checker-board or a game of tiddledy-de-winks. In that case we had to shoot crap quite a bit. Generally the whole outfit includin’ the crew, galley hounds, and even Punkjaw, shot all mornin’ long and after dinner we _encored_ until dark. The games got so high and interestin’ until the ship’s officers and some army lieutenants got a few hands in. That’s how I met Lindsey, the third engineer. He and I got chummy over a couple of good hands that ran for me almost half an hour and first thing I knew I had fixed to sleep in his stateroom on the little sofa thing in there. “’Bout that time I made friends with Julius. He served the captain’s mess and used to hand me in a feed every meal through the port-hole. Talk about good _monjayin’_. Boy, them was the days when a dish of ham and eggs looked like a mess-kit full of ‘corn willy.’ Them officers used to get chicken almost every meal. Course I _monjayed_ just as good as they did when that chink steward didn’t have his heads on Julius. “The only ceremonies that took place on board was funerals. We had quite a few mules die, and of course there wasn’t much use in carryin’ them along like that. A dead mule ain’t much account hitched up to a ration cart or a rollin’ kitchen. So we hauled ’em up and let ’em slide overboard. There was a couple of guys who hollered about doin’ that, as they said German submarines might track us or find out that there was boats around if they saw dead mules floatin’ on the ocean. But I told those fellows that it would be a darn sight easier to locate us if we kept the mules on board than if we threw ’em over. “After fifteen days of rollin’ and pitchin’ we sneaked into the danger zone, as that place was called where there was supposed to be _beaucoup_ U-boats. Funny thing, but you never heard a word ’bout submarines until we hit the zone. Then the only thing said was that we might have to swim a good deal if we got hit, as most of the boats were not seaworthy. Still we kept on drillin’ with them just as if they were good enough to get in if the ship got torpedoed.