Loud applause followed this combined announcement of non-commissioned officers.
The general further remarked upon the necessity of continued drill and training together in the new formation and added:
"Hold yourselves in readiness, men, for orders that may come from Washington at any time respecting new duties. Your squads, Lieutenant Loring, may be divided up in France, each serving on active duty with a platoon reduced to three regular squads and one of yours. It is the idea to place these men in certain positions where organized sniping is most effective, the snipers, of course, to be protected by the regular men. And now, I hope and feel sure that each and every one of you, when before the enemy, will give a good account of himself and do his duty in our great cause!"
And the general received the greatest cheering of the occasion.
Old Ocean! The rolling, billowy blue, apparently endless, with nothing but the paler sky, sometimes the gray, threatening sky, dipping into the dark water on every side. And the vessel; its never ceasing engines throbbing, turning, whirring, sending the great hull on and on and on, over swells, through shorter billows, sloshing into whitecaps, and the two insignificant humans up there at the wheel directing the mapped course of this great bulk of steel so that her road was as clear, as certain, as though with wheels under her instead of astern, she followed a turnpike on the solid earth. But by no means alone. Not far behind, so close indeed that the white divided waters were always visible, another transport, also full of troops, sailed the blue sea, and back of that still another plainly in sight in daytime and at times discernible at night.
And on every side the greyhounds of the sea. Uncle Sam takes chances in sending his troopships over the ocean, for well he knows that, lurking in many places, the enemy submarines, the U-boats that have done most to make the history of this war so remarkable, and have added so greatly to its horrors, seek their prey like man-eating sharks ready to attack helpless swimmers.
The convoy vessels, with their sharp-eyed watchers and heavy guns, bring to port in safety the transport ships.
"Sorry for you, old chump," was Herbert's remark to Roy, as the latter stood by the rail in the wee small hours of night and made as though to cast his entire stomach into the briny depths far below. From bits of his strained conversation one would imagine that the boy might attempt to cast himself overboard so as to keep company with the stomach which so far he had been unable to detach, and so Herbert chose not to leave him. "Say, old man, what you want to do——"