The "Dead Rat Cabin" on
The Florence Luckenbach.
We received an S. O. S. call on Monday from the Campana, one of the Standard Oil tankers. She had just been torpedoed in the Bay of Biscay, three hundred miles south of us. She went down in less than five minutes, the wireless operator said. An hour later we got "Submarine ten miles ahead" and this kept everybody interested until dinner time.
Two days ago the destroyer which had convoyed us thus far from St. Nazaire wigwagged over that we were now out of the war zone and that she would have to leave us here. An hour later, just as a little squall set up, she turned her prow eastward and left us to the mercy of the subs. Since then it's become rougher and rougher and now the old tub, ten or twelve feet higher out of the water anyway than when they came over loaded, is tossing about like a cork. Yesterday the log read only four knots an hour during the forenoon, and from eight to eleven o'clock this morning we only made two knots. If our speed were to continue to decrease at this rate, we'd be going back towards France by tomorrow.
The chief engineer, a jolly old Scotchman named
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