“We’ll have to answer the blasted fool,” somebody growled on the bridge, and a cross voice replied: “The Sheridan.”
“What?”
“The transport Sheridan,” came an exasperated bawl from our bridge.
“All right. Proceed to sea,” was the answer, and once more the propellers threshed and passed astern, seeking out the Logan. We now knew the boat to be a harbor patrol, guarding the entrance to the bay. We appreciated its protection, and extreme care for two transports trying to get away from San Francisco filled with troops. We wondered if that happened to be the way the Germans sneaked out of their ports.
Presently we heard the Logan challenged, as we had been, and the reply from her bridge.
There were still more thrilling things in store for us. We saw the beam of a searchlight from Fort Scott playing across the Golden Gate. We expected that when we came within its range, it would lift and let us pass. Instead, its beam was turned full upon us, and stayed on us, lighting up the whole vessel till it looked like a floating hotel drifting out to sea. It must have been a wonderful sight from the hills of San Francisco. We went into the smoking-room, where the steward had hung bath towels over the ports to conceal all lights, and lit cigarettes with due precautions against showing the flash of the match. We had to go somewhere to get out of the glare of that searchlight.
Soon we felt the heave of the Pacific under us, the engines settled down to their work to twist behind the miles between us and Vladivostok, and we were off to the war, feeling as if we had stolen somebody’s chickens. We had gotten away about as secretly as a three-ring circus.
III
JAPAN TO VLADIVOSTOK
Our transports put in at Hakodate for coal. From San Francisco, something had been wrong with the Logan’s engines. What it was, she would neither tell by wireless, nor signal by wig-wag. We heard everything from a story that German spies had tangled fish-nets in her propeller, to a yarn that bearings for her engines had been forgotten on the dock. But the result was, that the Logan, which had been armed especially to protect us, lolled behind, at times dropping below the horizon, and we slopped around in the Pacific with steerage way, waiting for her to catch up. This continued day after day, and we burned deeply into our coal supply.
For some reason, we could not get enough coal in Hakodate, and after a couple of days, pulled out for Otaru, Japan, where we stopped another two days, and went ashore again. When we had exhausted the sights of the small city, some of us went on to Sapporo by train, and saw that provincial capital.