Just then the top-kicker’s whistle blew and I had to submit to the plan. We started off, with the big fellow carrying Esky, besides all his own kit. Thank God we didn’t have to walk far. We rode to the train in trucks. Nobody molested us and Esky behaved admirably, aside from a little stretching and wiggling which ceased as soon as I began to pet him. When we boarded the ship in the morning, the big boy stepped lively up the gangplank with a smirking laugh, all prepared for Lieutenant Blaines, in case he happened to be around. But that gentleman was nowhere in sight. The officers at the rail gave my overloaded comrade a matter-of-fact glance, the top-kicker accepted his mumbled “some o’ General Backett’s stuff” and waved us past, and we followed the stream of traffic to the hole wherein we were supposed to spend the next fortnight or more. The compartment assigned to our company proved to be too small by three bunks and the top-kicker finally assigned the big fellow and another odd number to join me in a little cubby-hole that used to be a paint shop and was now a hole just big enough for three bunks. Here we rested. I found that the big boy’s name was Ben Garlotz and that he used to be a prizefighter, under the ring name of Big Ben Bailey. He certainly had all the attributes of a rough, tough, genuine he-man. I liked him immensely and so did Esky, who was doomed to spend the duration of the trip under my bunk. The other bunkmate’s name was Maurice Getterlow, and I believe he was some kind of a Semitic. We certainly made up a strange trio of bed-fellows—and Esky made an even stranger fourth member of the squad. Dawn saw us in the lower harbor—and Private Canwick was en route to France. God help Leon and preserve Aunt Elinor from hysterics! I hoped they were both praying for me and that for once they might stand in with Mr. John Q. Headman! CHAPTER 6 A JOY HOLE —1— I have never forgotten the first days on board that boat. “Well,” I said to myself, “if I am off to the war: to the war I must go!” And how! That tub we were on must have been a poor relation to a river steamer before it was commandeered for transport purposes. I don’t see how we kept up with the other ships that made up that squadron—I thought the destroyers or torpedo boats or whatever they were that we saw way off in the distance, hopping around like snake feeders, would lose us in the night. We were just chugging along—and a more monotonous voyage I never could imagine.