The Gentleman from Louisiana yielded to his younger and stronger countryman. Someone had spoken of the lack of convoy. “Don’t you think we haven’t a convoy,” the kid remarked.
I scanned the sea in all directions and saw nothing but the dark waters. “Where is it?” I inquired.
“There’s one on each side of us,” said Young America. “They’re about twenty miles from the ship.”
“I should think,” said somebody, “that a very slender submarine might slip in between our side kicks and us and do its regular job.”
“No chance,” the youth replied. “The convoy boats are used as decoys. The sub would see them first and spend all its ammunition.”
A little later he confided in me that the new American warships were two hundred and forty-five thousand horsepower. I had no idea there were that many horses left to measure by.
We spotted a shooting star. “That was a big one,” I said.
“Big! Do you know the actual size of those things? I got it straight from a professor of astronomy. Listen. They’re as small as a grain of sand.”
“Why do they look so big?”
“Because they’re so far away and they travel so fast.”
Round ten o’clock, beckoning lights ashore told us we were close to safety. But the French gunners remained at their posts two hours longer. The captain’s shouted order, relieving them from duty, was music to our ears.
After midnight, however, we turned a complete circle, and at once the deck was alive with rumors. We had been hit, we were going to be hit, we were afraid we would be hit, and so on. The fact was that our pilot from ashore was behind time and we circled round rather than stand still and be an easy target while awaiting him. We were in harbor and anchored at three. Many of us stayed up to see the sun rise over France. It was worth the sleep it cost.
They told us we would not dock until six tonight. Before retiring to my cabin for a nap, I heard we had run over a submarine and also that we had not. The latter story lacked heart interest, but had the merit, probably, of truth. Submarines have little regard for traffic laws, but are careful not to stall their engines in the middle of a boulevard.
I was peacefully asleep when the French officers came aboard to give us and our passports the Double O. They had to send to my cabin for me. I was ordered to appear at once in the salon de conversation. A barber hater addressed me through his beard and his interpreter: “What is Monsieur Laudanum’s business in France?”
I told him I was a correspondent.
“For who?”
“Mark Sullivan.”
“Have you credentials from him?”
“No, sir.”
“Your passport says you are going to Belgium. Do you know there are no trains to Belgium?”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Well, there are no trains. How will you go there?”
“I’ll try to get a taxi,” I said.
“Are you going from here to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“And where are you going from Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please explain that answer.”
“I will go wherever the authorities permit me to go.”
“That is not a satisfactory answer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What is your real business in France?”
“To write.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to keep your passport. You will appear tomorrow morning at nine o’clock at this address.”
And they handed me a scary-looking card.
On the deck I met our congressman and told him my troubles.
“I know these fellows very well,” he said. “If you like, I can fix it for you.”
“No,” I replied proudly. “I’d rather do my own fixing.”
At the dock I got into a taxi and asked to be taken to the ⸻ Hotel. Not to my dying day will I forget that first ride in a French taxi. Part of the time we were on the right side of the street, part of the time on the left, and never once were we traveling under a hundred and fifty miles an hour. We turned twenty corners and always on one ear. We grazed dozens of frightened pedestrians, many of them men crippled in the war, or by taxis, and women too old to dodge quickly. We aimed at a score of rickety horse-drawn vehicles, but our control was bad and we bumped only one. In front of the hostelry we stopped with a jerk.
“Comme beaucoup?” I asked the assassin.
“Un franc cinquante,” he said.
Only thirty cents, and I thought I knew why. When they get through a trip without killing anyone, they feel they have not done themselves justice nor given you a square deal.
I found myself a seat at a sidewalk table and ordered sustenance. The vial they brought it in was labeled “Bière Ritten,” but I suspect the adjective was misspelled.
Till darkness fell I watched the passing show—streetcars with lady motormen and conductors; hundreds of old carts driven by old women, each cart acting as a traveling roof for an old dog; wounded soldiers walking or hobbling along, some of them accompanied by sad-faced girls; an appalling number of women in black; a lesser number of gayly garbed and extremely cordial ones, and whole flocks of mad taxis, seeking whom they might devour.
By using great caution at the street crossings, I succeeded in reaching the telegraph office where I wrote a message informing Paris friends of my arrival. I presented it to the lady in the cage, who handed it back with the advice that it must be rewritten in French. I turned away discouraged and was starting out again into the gloom when I beheld at a desk the songbird of the ship. Would she be kind enough to do my translating? She would.
The clerk approved the new document,
