"But the night-watches, sir?"
"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't—at least I hope not. Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.
Doc could have slept longer—about twenty-four hours longer, he thought, when he found himself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship which had wakened him.
By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock—three in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning. He had been asleep two hours.
He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was ashore.
Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that other light," the old man was saying.
"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind on U-boats."
That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me and you-all would have been. Look here"—he hauled down the chart-book and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."
It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes. By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside Havre.
Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her. About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them, the brav' Américains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck, saw the dramatic values and assumed most languid poses. Oh, the great pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.