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By Root 8594 0

had submerged and gone some time ago. The men in the boats started pul ing towards shore. Til nightfal the strong tide was carrying them in fast towards the Pentland Firth. In the last dusk they could see the tal headlands of the Orkneys. But when the tide changed they couldn't make headway against it. The men in the boats and the men in the rafts took turn and turn about at the oars but they couldn't buck the terrible ebb. Somebody said the tide ran eight knots an hour in there. It was a pretty bad night. With the first dawn they caught sight of a scoutcruiser bearing down on them. Her searchlight glared suddenly in their faces making everything look black again. The Britishers took 'em on board and hustled them down into the engineroom to get warm. A redfaced steward came down with a bucket of steaming tea with rum in it and served it out with a ladle. The scoutcruiser took 'em into Glasgow, pretty wel shaken up by the chop of the Irish Sea, and they al stood around in the drizzle on the dock while Cap'n Perry went to find the American consul. Joe was getting numb in the feet standing stil and tried to walk across to the iron gates opposite the wharf house to take a squint down the street, but an elderly man in a uniform poked a bayonet at his bel y and he stopped. Joe went back to the crowd and told

'em how they were prisoners there like they were fritzes. Jez, it made 'em sore. Flannagan started tel ing about how the frogs had arrested him one time for getting into a fight with an orangeman in a bar in Marseil es and had

-62-been ready to shoot him because they said the Irish were al pro-German. Joe told about how the limeys had run him in in Liverpool. They were al grousing about how the whole business was a lousy deal when Ben Tarbel the mate turned up with an old guy from the consulate and told 'em to come along.

They had to troop half across town through streets

black dark for fear of airraids and slimy with rain, to a long tarpaper shack inside a barbedwire enclosure. Ben Tarbel told the boys he was sorry but they'd have to stay there for the present, and that he was trying to get the consul to do something about it and the old man had cabled the owners to try to get 'em some pay. Some girls from the Red Cross brought them grub, mostly bread and mar-malade and meatpaste, nothing you could real y sink your teeth into, and some thin blankets. They stayed in that damn place for twelve days, playing poker and yarning and reading old newspapers. Evenings sometimes a frousy halfdrunk woman would get past the old guard and peel in the door of the shack and beckon one of the men out into the foggy darkness behind the latrines somewhere. Some of the guys were disgusted and wouldn't go.

They'd been shut up in there so long that when the

mate final y came around and told 'em they were going home they didn't have enough spunk left in 'em to yel . They went across the town packed with traffic and gas-flare in the fog again and on board a new 6000 ton freighter, the Vicksburg, that had just unloaded a cargo of cotton. It felt funny being a passenger and being able to lay around al day on the trip home.

Joe was lying out on the hatchcover the first sunny day they'd had when old Cap'n Perry came up to him. Joe got to his feet. Cap'n Perry said he hadn't had a chance to tel him what he thought of him for having the presence of mind to cut the lashings on those rafts and that half the men on the boat owed their lives to him. He said Joe was

-63-a bright boy and ought to start studying how to get out of the focastle and that the American merchant marine was growing every day on account of the war and young fel ers like him were just what they needed for officers.

"You remind me, boy," he said, "when we get to Hampton Roads and I'l see what I can do on the next ship I get. You could get your third mate's ticket right now with a little time in shore school." Joe grinned and said he sure would like to. It made him feel good the whole trip. He couldn't wait to go and see Del and tel her he wasn't in the focastle any more. Dod