Entrance to a boat was by ticket only. The tickets were six inches square and bore a number. If you lost your ticket you lost your life. Each of the more imaginative passengers insured his life by fastening the ticket to his clothes with a safety-pin. Two days from land there was a full-dress rehearsal, and for the first time we met those with whom we were expected to put to sea in an open boat. Apparently those in each boat were selected by lot. As one young doctor in the ambulance service put it: "The society in my boat is not at all congenial." The only other persons originally in my boat were Red Cross nurses of the Post unit and infants. In trampling upon them to safety I foresaw no difficulty. But at the dress rehearsal the purser added six dark and dangerous-looking Spaniards. It developed later that by profession they were bull-fighters. Any man who is not afraid of a bull is entitled to respect. But being cast adrift with six did not appeal. One could not help wondering what would happen if we ran out of provisions and the bull-fighters grew hungry. I tore up my ticket and planned to swim. Some of the passengers took the rehearsal to heart, and, all night, fully dressed, especially as to boots, tramped the deck. As the promenade-deck is directly over the cabins, not only they did not sleep but neither did any one else. The next day they began to see periscopes. For this they were not greatly to be blamed. The sea approach to Bordeaux is flagged with black buoys supporting iron masts that support the lights, and in the rain and fog they look very much like periscopes. But after the passengers had been thrilled by the sight of twenty of them, they became so bored with false alarms that had a real submarine appeared they were in a mood to invite the captain on board and give him a drink. While we still were anxiously keeping watch, a sail appeared upon the horizon. Even the strongest glasses could make nothing of it. A young, very young Frenchman ran to the bridge and called to the officers: "Gentlemen, will you please tell me what boat it is that I see?" Had he asked the same question of an American captain while that officer was on the bridge, the captain would have turned his back. An English captain would have put him in irons. But the French captain called down to him: "She is pilot-boat No. 28. The pilot's name is Jean Baptiste. He has a wife and four children in Bordeaux, and others in Brest and Havre. He is fifty years old and has a red nose and a wart on his chin. Is there anything else you would like to know?" At daybreak, as the ship swept up the Gironde to Bordeaux, we had our first view of the enemy.