Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/250

 side the city; and another, whose water tight compartments had held, had barely been able to get to port. From the reports we got, one would have thought there was a squadron of submarines waiting for us. But orders are orders, and therefore at five this morning, with all fifty-seven of the crew on deck, we sailed down the Loire, through two or three locks, and out into the ocean. In a way I am glad to be going home. Yet leaving now, when our troops are just arriving and when I could get into any branch of the service from aviation to artillery, merely to enter college, doesn't seem exactly right. But the family can't see it my way.

My regular mess-boy duties have started now. I was up at four this morning, to make coffee for the engineers and the officer on the bridge. I'd never made the stuff before, but I dumped two or three cups of grounds into an old pot, stole some hot water from the cook's steam-chest and let it boil on the back of the stove while I fixed some toast to go along with it. They complimented me on it when I took it to them at five o'clock, said it was nice and soapy, and hoped someone else would make it the next time. After this I washed the dishes from the midnight-lunch of the crew, and then started chambermaiding the rooms. You not only have to make the beds carefully, fold the pajamas and straighten out the clothes of some measly under-officer whom you