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You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like
myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting
quotation marks--which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will
forget me.
My home is in Santa Monica. I am, or was, junior member of my father's firm.
We are ship-builders. Of recent years we have specialized on submarines, which
we have built for Germany, England, France and the United States. I know a sub
as a mother knows her baby's face, and have commanded a score of them on
their trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I graduated under
Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father obtained his permission to try for
the Lafayette Escadrille. As a stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in the
American ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill
whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.
I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows who were going into the American
ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown Prince Nobbler, asleep at my feet,
when the first blast of the whistle shattered the peace and security of the ship.
Ever since entering the U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for periscopes,
and children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to see us safely
into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread marauders. We were
young; we craved thrills, and God knows we got them that day; yet by comparison
with that through which I have since passed they were as tame as a Punch-and-
Judy show.
I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their
life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also,
and over the ship's side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a
submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly
visible. We were aboard an American ship--which, of course, was not armed. We
were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being torpedoed.
I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo. It struck us on
the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel rocked as though the sea
beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty volcano. We were thrown to the decks,
bruised and stunned, and then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of steel
and wood and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds of
feet into the air.
The silence which followed the detonation of the exploding torpedo was almost
equally horrifying. It lasted for perhaps two seconds, to be followed by the
screams and moans of the wounded, the cursing of the men and the hoarse
commands of the ship's officers. They were splendid--they and their crew. Never
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