The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. William Allen White
that we would try on our life preservers that afternoon. The life preservers were thrown on our beds by the stewards and at three o'clock each passenger appeared beside the life-boat assigned to him, donned his life-belt which gave him a ridiculously stuffed appearance, answered to a roll-call, guyed those about him after the manner of old friends, and waited for something else. It never came. The ship's officers gradually faded from the decks and the passengers, after standing around foolishly for a time, disappeared one by one into their cabins and bloomed out again with their life-belts moulted! That was the last we heard of the boat-drill or the life-belts. The French are just that casual.
But one evening at late twilight the ship went a-flutter over a grisly incident that brought us close up to the war. We were gathered in the dusk looking at a sailing ship far over to the south—a mere speck on the horizon's edge. Signals began to twinkle from her and we felt our ship give a lurch and turn north zigzagging at full speed. The signals of the sailing ship were distress signals, but we sped away from her as fast as our engines would take us, for, though her signals may have been genuine, also they may have been a U-boat lure. Often the Germans have used the lure of distress signals on a sailing ship and when a rescuer has appeared, the U-boat has sent to death the Good Samaritan of the sea! It is awful. But the German has put mercy off the sea!
Some way the average man goes back to his home environment for his moral standards, and that night as we walked the deck, Henry broke out with this: "I've been thinking about this U-boat business; how it would be if we had the German's job. I have been trying to think if there is any one in Wichita who could go out and run a U-boat the way these Germans run U-boats, and I've been trying to imagine him sitting on the front porch of the Country Club or down at the Elks Club talking about it, telling how he lured the captain of a ship by his distress signal to come to the rescue of a sinking ship and then destroyed the rescuer, and I've been trying to figure out how the fellows sitting around him would take it. They'd get up and leave. He would be outcast as unspeakable and no brag or bluff or blare of victory would gloss over his act. We simply don't think the German way. We have a loyalty to humanity deeper than our patriotism. There are certain things self-respecting men can't do and live in Wichita. But there seem to be no restrictions in Germany. The U-boat captain using the distress signal as a lure probably holds about such a place in his home town as Charley Carey, our banker, or Walter Innes, our dry goods man. He is doubtless a leading citizen of some German town; doubtless a kind father, a good husband and maybe a pillar of the church. And I suppose town and home and church will applaud him when he goes back to Germany to brag about his treachery. In Wichita, town and home and church would be ashamed of Charley Carey and Walter Innes if they came back to brag about killing men who were lured to death by responding to the call of distress."
And so, having disposed of the psychology of the enemy, we turned in for the night. We were entering the danger zone and the night was hot. A few passengers slept on deck; but most of the ship's company went to their cabins. We didn't seem to be afraid. We presumed that our convoy would appear in the morning. But when it failed to appear we assumed that there was no danger. No large French passenger boat had been sunk by the Germans; this fact we heard a dozen times that day. It soothed us. The day passed without bringing our convoy. Again we went to bed, realizing rather clearly that the French do take things casually; and believing firmly that the convoys would come with the dawn. But dawn came and brought no convoy. We seemed to be nearing land. The horizon was rarely without a boat. The day grew bright. We were almost through the danger zone. We went to lunch a gay lot, all of us; but we hurried back to the deck; not uneasily, not in fear, understand, but just to be on deck, looking landward. And then at two o'clock it appeared. Far off in the northeast was a small black dot in the sky. It looked like a seabird; but it grew. In ten minutes the whole deck was excited. Every glass was focused on the growing black spot. And then it loomed up the size of a baseball; it showed colour, a dull yellow in the distance and then it swelled and took form and glowed brighter and came rushing toward us, as large as a moon, as large as a barrel, and then we saw its outlines, and it came swooping over us, a great beautiful golden thing and the whole deck burst into cheers. It was our convoy, a dirigible balloon—vivid golden yellow, trimmed with blue! How fair it seemed. How graceful and how surely and how powerfully it circled about the ship like a great hovering bird, and how safe we felt; and as we cheered and cheered the swirling, glowing, beautiful thing, we knew how badly frightened we really had been. With danger gone, the tension lifted and we read the fear in our hearts. A torpedo boat destroyer came lumbering across the sky line. It also was to convoy us, but it had a most undramatic entrance; and besides we had sighted land. The deck cheered easily, so we cheered the land. And everyone ran about exclaiming to everyone else about the wonder and splendour of the balloon, and everyone took pictures of everyone else and promised to send prints, and the land waxed fat and loomed large and hospitable while Henry paced the deck with his hands clasped reflectively behind him. He was deeply moved and language didn't satisfy him much. Finally he took his fellow Kansan by the arm and pointed to the magnificence of the hovering spectre in yellow and blue that circled about the ship:
"Bill," he said, solemnly, "isn't she a peach!" He paused, then from his heart he burst out: "'How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of them that bring glad tidings!' I wish the fellows in Wichita could get this thing for the wheat show!"
And thus we came to the shores of sunny France, a land that was to remind us over and over again of our own sunny land of Kansas.
We landed after dark. Every one was going about vowing deathless friendship to every one else, and so far as the stenographers and the ambulance boys were concerned, it came to Henry and me that we meant it; for they were a fine lot, just joyous, honest, brave young Americans going out to do their little part in a big enterprise. While we were bidding good-bye to our boys and girls, we kept a weather eye on the Eager Soul. She had hooked the Gilded Youth fairly deeply. He saw that her trunk came up from the hold, but we noticed that while he was gone, the Doctor showed up and went with her to sort out her hand-baggage from the pile on the deck. The gang plank was let down under a pair of smoky torches. And the Gilded Youth had paid a fine tip some place to be permitted to be the first passenger off the boat that he might get one of the two taxis in sight for the Eager Soul. She followed him, but she made him let the Doctor come along. And so the drinks—lemon squash and buttermilk—were equally on Henry and me. We hurried down the gang plank after the happy trio. They were young—so infinitely and ineffably young, it seemed to us. And the girl's face was flushed and joyous, and her hair—why it didn't shake out and drown her we never knew; certainly it surged out from under her hat like ripples of youth incarnate. We saw them stacking their valises in the taxi and over the taxi and around the taxi and the last we saw of her was when she bent out of the cab window and waved and smiled at us, two sedate old parties alone there in the crowd, with the French language rising to our ears as we teetered unsteadily into it.
What an adventure they were going into—what a new adventure, the new and beautiful adventure of youth, the old and inexplicable adventure of life! So we waved back at them so long as they were in sight, and the white handkerchief of the Eager Soul fluttered back from the disappearing cab. When it was gone, Henry turned to a sad-looking cabman with a sway-backed carriage and explained with much eloquence that we wanted him to haul us a la hotel France—toot sweet!
[Illustration with caption: So we waved back at them so long as they were in sight]
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH WE OBSERVE THE "ROCKET'S RED GLARE"
Bordeaux is the "Somewhere in France" from which cablegrams from passengers on the French liners usually are sent. This will be no news to the Germans, nor to Americans who read the advertisements of the French liners, but it may be news to Americans who receive the mysterious cablegrams "from a French port," after their friends have landed. It is a dear old town, mouldy, and weather-beaten, and mediaeval, this Bordeaux, with high, mysterious walls along the street's over which hang dusty branches of trees or vines sneaking mischievously out of bounds. A woe-begone trolley creaks through the narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning