'Close your gun shutters!' and he and the gunnery officer raced below, one to port and the other to starboard, rousing the crew and directing the slamming of the gun shutters and tightening of the screw bolts that secured them. The surgeon and I turned startled eyes on each other as the great wave, tearing shoreward at express-train speed, combed and broke off Torrecilla Point, where the chart shows ten fathoms of water. Then we too dashed below, he to his patients and I to see that the water-tight doors of my storerooms were securely fastened. With the semiautomatic habit of the sea, I looked at my watch and 'registered' the time as I ran. It was 3.47 on an ordinary, showery-bright afternoon, the twenty-ninth of August, 1916. I was in the passage under the lower wardroom country when the Memphis groaned like a man with his hand caught in a winch and seemed to lie flat on her side. She boomed like an enormous muffled bell as she struggled to right herself. Up and up she climbed as I passed the ordnance storeroom; then down, down, like a dropping elevator. The electrical storeroom was secured. I remember thinking, 'Good man, Saunders - I might have known his shop would be- What on earth?' For my feet stung with a grinding jar, and the old Memphis again trembled and shrieked. The way to the forward storerooms was hard to negotiate, for by now the ship was behaving like the car of a roller coaster. I could hear hatches clanging shut and the rush and gurgle of water in the gun deck above. The chief pay clerk met me in the warrant officers' alley. 'All secure forward,' he reported. Then he too said, 'What on earth?' for again came that grinding thump, and the lights went out. Through the dark came his VOL. 139- NO. 6 B quizzical voice: 'It looks to me like time to begin picking up papers!' II The pay office was next to be visited; and to reach there I had to go out again on the quarter-deck, for all other hatches seemed to be closed and fastened. Between ship and shore the sea was an incredible nightmare. The little Castine, dancing like a mad thing, had come out of the river, and a small knot of our men who were lashing the gasoline drums at the break of the superstructure cheered her each time she poked her gallant white nose through a howling, gray-backed wave. Our liberty boat was half a mile from the ship, riding low and heavily. She had taken much water and the men were bailing feverishly. Then she stopped and slewed uncertainly. A man seized the colors and began frantically to wigwag 'E-n-g-i-n-e b-r-o-' Then she broached to and the insane sea took her. An old petty officer in the lee of Turret Two cried, 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' Inside the superstructure I had to wrap both arms around a stanchion and hold on until my breath returned after that mad dash across the open deck. I distinctly remember thinking, 'What is this? There's not a hatful of wind out there.' The grinding jars were frequent and monotonously regular now. Crunch! crunch! crunch! at half-minute intervals. There was no longer any puzzle about it. The Memphis was crashing against the coral bottom of the roads with every wave trough. The deck ahead was dark with hatches and gun shutters closed; but as I clung to the stanchion the sea crashed heavily against the starboard side. The heavy nuts stripped the threads from the dogs of number three three-inch gun port; and half the shutter crashed on the deck as a two-foot stream of water roared in. I reached the pay office at last. Two feet of gray water was swirling around the desks; and the file-case drawers had spilled their contents and were hanging drunkenly. My chief yeoman, with angry face, was grabbing furiously at the falling papers and lashing them in soggy bundles. 'Hell, Paymaster,' he growled, forgetting all else in his irritation, 'it'll take me a month to get this place clean!' Together we lashed the most valuable records to overhead pipes and beams, out of reach of the charging water. We each arranged the package we should take in case the ship had to be abandoned. This was for the yeoman's benefit. He did not know what I had seen no boat could live in the seething hell of that sea. A crash and confused shouting in the compartment outside made me leave the pay office. The mess tables had come down from their racks and were surging about as the heavy rolling sent the ankle-deep water swirling across the deck. The crew's piano tore loose from its chocks and dashed crazily toward the side, taking complete charge of the passageway. We knew that many men were still below. The passage must be cleared. So the half-dozen apprentice boys and the young boatswain's mate I found in the compartment set out with me to capture the piano. It was very like capturing a wise and frolicsome mule in the middle of a rushing stream. As my foot slipped the accursed thing whirled wickedly, striking my hip and knocking me down. Like a flash a lean arm flew under my chin, and, with a jerk that made my neck bones crack, the boatswain's mate pulled me clear. 'Careful, sir!' was his only comment. last, for it wedged itself in the training gear of number four gun long enough for the boys to get a line around it and lash it to the gun mount. Then a boy who was clinging to the guard rail of a companionway called, 'There's somebody down in the gun deck!' and we made our way in short spurts across to the ladder head. The ship was now rolling drunkenly through a fifty-degree arc, with always that sickening pounding at the middle of the swing. Down in the gloom of the gun deck three or four feet of water surged back and forth, now leaving the glistening red linoleum bare, now roaring through the overhead beams as the poor old Memphis labored. Six-inch drill shell, loose from the racks, leaped and rumbled back and forth, making the footing dangerous. Two or three men were at the other end of the lower compartment, watching their chance to win through the water and the spinning shells to the ladder. 'Make a chain,' suggested the boatswain's mate. The heaviest bluejacket wound both legs and an arm around a near-by stanchion. The rest of us, fingers around wrists, formed a rope of men down the ladder, reaching a free hand out to the marooned men below. Another gun shutter smashed in; and the inrush of water boiled down the ladder over our backs and shoulders. The first to try to reach us was a short, plump machinist. Barely five feet in height, he had a girth of over four. As the roll left the compartment momentarily dry, he danced daintily between the tumbling shells like a fat, bewhiskered bacchante. As the ship started to roll back, sending roaring tons of water into our side of the deck, a tall sheet-steel locker came down from its moorings on the bulkhead and dashed at him. He escaped its blow by leap The piano's charge on me was its ing for the overhead piping, swinging from any of them anything except cooperation and encouragement in the full and complete discharge of my duty to the State. Moreover, I am unable to understand how anything that I was taught to believe as a Catholic could possibly be in conflict with what is good citizenship. The essence of my faith is built upon the Commandments of God. The law of the land is built upon the Commandments of God. There can be no conflict between them. Instead of quarreling among ourselves over dogmatic principles, it would be infinitely better if we joined together in inculcating obedience to these Commandments in the hearts and minds of the youth of the country as the surest and best road to happiness on this earth and to peace in the world to come. This is the common ideal of all religions. What we need is more religion for our young people, not less; and the way to get more religion is to stop the bickering among our sects which can only have for its effect the creation of doubt in the minds of our youth as to whether or not it is necessary to pay attention to religion at all. Then I know your imputations are false when I recall the long list of other public servants of my faith who have loyally served the State. You as a lawyer will probably agree that the office of Chief Justice of the United States is second not even to that of the President in its influence on the national development and policy. That court by its interpretation of the Federal Constitution is a check not only upon the President himself but upon Congress as well. During one fourth of its history it has been presided over by two Catholics, Roger Brooke Taney and Edward Douglass White. No one has suggested that the official conduct of either of these men was affected by any unwarranted religious influence or that religion played with them any part other than it should play in the life of every God-fearing man. And I know your imputations are false when I recall the tens of thousands of young Catholics who have risked and sacrificed their lives in defense of our country. These fundamentals of life could not be true unless your imputations were false. But, wishing to meet you on your own ground, I address myself to your definite questions, against which I have thus far made only general statements. I must first call attention to the fact that you often divorce sentences from their context in such a way as to give them something other than their real meaning. I will specify. You refer to the Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII as 'declaring to the world that the orders of the Church of England were void, her priests not priests,' and so forth. You say that this was the 'strange fruit' of the toleration of England to the Catholics. You imply that the Pope gratuitously issued an affront to the Anglican Church. In fact, this Apostolic Letter was an answer to a request made at the instance of priests of the Anglican Church for recognition by the Roman Catholic Church of the validity of their priestly orders. The request was based on the ground that they had been ordained in succession from the Roman Catholic priests who became the first priests of the Anglican Church. The Apostolic Letter was a mere adverse answer to this request, ruling that Anglican priests were not Roman Catholic priests, and was in no sense the gratuitous insult which you suggest it to be. It was not directed against England or citizens of that Empire. Again, you quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia that my Church 'regards dogmatic intolerance, not alone as her incontestable right, but as her sacred duty.' And you say that these words feet of water · abounded. Yet, as we looked shoreward across the deck, we stared into the faces of hundreds of people who shouted and waved their arms, trying to be heard against the screaming surf. Each pounding crash as we hit bottom had been a step toward shore. Broadside on, dragging a sixteen-thousand-pound anchor, the Memphis had stumbled that two miles, hopping the shoals and coral heads, grinding over the ledges; and at last she rested snugly across the mouth of a shallow cove bitten into a black, waterworn cliff. She had come right into the city, and all the city was there to meet her. Hardly one hundred feet separated us from the crowd on the cliff edge. They were hoisting wounded men out of the firerooms through a ventilator as I reached the deck. I learned then that the first crashing blow on the bottom had jarred loose the steam lines, sending scalding steam whistling through the engine and fire rooms. Then solid water had dashed down the funnels as the ship rolled into the face of some following wave, and several boilers had burst. Two officers and eleven men, ten of whom later died, had been caught in the steam and cruelly scalded. They could not be brought up the usual ladders for one reason, slimy black rocks were now jutting up four feet into the engine room and the lower ladders were broken. So the sound men had clambered up the ventilator shaft, and were now hoisting out coaling bags, a moaning, semiconscious man in each. Blood oozed slowly from cracks in their black-charred faces and arms. An ensign had seized a sounding line and was whirling the heavy lead in circles around his head. With a warning shout to the milling, hysterical crowd on the beach, he let it fly toward the shore. As the snaky line writhed over the rocks a dozen men seized it. By the time the scalded men were up from below, a heavy hawser had been passed ashore and a breeches buoy rigged. One at a time, the wounded men were sent sliding down this swaying bridge, each in his coaling bag hung on a snatch block. The controlling line by which the swiftness of the slide was checked broke with one of them. Two black men on the beach threw themselves under the hurtling bag, forming a battered living cushion between the wounded man and the knife-edged rocks. Then the sick went ashore. Eventually there were five lines to the beach; and after the last sick man was safely over the side the abandoning of the ship went on apace. On the bridge, Captain Beach was pacing slowly back and forth, his demeanor as cool as if he were waiting for his carriage at the door of a theatre. With a little smile on his face, he gave low-voiced orders and advice, chatted with the navigator, and joked with the men. His coolness was magnificent; and he planned the landing of the nine hundred and eighty men of his crew in the same detached way in which he conducted a routine drill. In orderly queues men fell in by each sagging line to the shore, and each line had its appointed crew of handlers, one to the block with its dangling 'bos'n's chair,' two to the uphaul. The petty officers in charge soon began to make a game of it, as bluejackets will. A water tender on the line from the wing of the bridge began with the high shrill yelp of a side-show barker. 'One more couple wanted!' he cried. 'A ride like this is ten cents at Coney Island!' The coxswain at the break of the superstructure took up the refrain. 'One more couple wanted! Don't crowd, don't push; free rides for one and all! Ladies' cloakroom to the right, gents' in the back of the hall! One more couple wanted!' In the lee of the engine-room hatch, one negligent arm hooked through the canopy cover and a useless, drenched blanket across his mighty shoulders, towered the electrical gunner. Foursquare he stood, his back to the seas that swept over the ship at half-minute intervals. His shoulders and head split the rushing water like a rock in a freshet. Kept dry, deep in the palm of one huge hand, his corncob pipe was burning. As I stopped in his lee to let a wave go by, he gave me a pull on the pipe, and never did tobacco smoke taste sweeter. 'I was in the New Hampshire's liberty boat when she overset in North River,' he drawled, grinning, and I lost my best clothes. I was in the E4, and lost all my kit. And I was in the Annapolis when she tried to knock a rock out of the ocean down Samoa way. That claim for clothes is n't settled yet, and here's this darn thing! Next time I'm ordered to sea I'll file an inventory of my clothes and gear with the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, with instructions to consider it a claim for lost property when my ship sinks!' The men were fairly scampering off the ship now, ten or twelve a minute sliding down the lines to be caught in the arms of the crowd on the rocks. As they landed, the people- and we were technically at war with these people, please remember would swarm around them with blankets and rum or hot coffee. As the blankets gave out, hysterical women would tear off their petticoats to wrap around the shoulders of the shivering bluejackets. And how they shivered! The water that surged over us was almost hot, and was greasy with a stinking gray slime; but when the water subsided, the air that struck our wet tired bodies cut through with a chill like a raw March day. Still there was no wind, or the cold might have numbed us as we waited our turn at the swaying lines. IV It was apparent now that our safe arrival on shore was assured, provided the ship held together long enough. Nine hundred men on shore require housing and food; and they would look to the paymaster to provide it. Housing and food on shore require money, and the money was down below. The junior surgeon had a flashlight in his hand; and together we plunged below between waves. My room was two decks down; but after a little blundering we found an open hatch and reached the safe. The surgeon, over his knees in black water, held the light while I opened the combination. The government had provided me with a handbag for transporting government money, a huge black thing with a steel frame. Empty, it would drag down a fair swimmer. I decided that 'monkeying' a swaying line nearly a hundred feet, over crashing surf, carrying that bag, was a job for a better man than I. There were safety pins in my mending kit, which I found, miraculously, where I remembered seeing it last. I fastened a row of them around my waist, pinning my shirt to underclothing. Then between shirt and undershirt I packed the bundles of money. My pistol belt clamped snug around my waist held them in place, and my tightly buttoned blouse over all made all secure. 'Now,' I told the doctor as I pulled on a padded life jacket, 'I guess I'm ready to go.' I could not understand why the doctor laughed as we groped our way out again. Then, as I mounted the bridge ladder, I found it strangely narrow. As I reported to the Captain that the |