his warnings:

"There's no menace in preparedness, no threat in being strong,
If the people's brain be healthy and they think no thought of wrong."

After four or five most agreeable days aboard the _Queen_ the word came to
embark, and I was duly transferred to the _Saxon_, an old Union Castle
liner that was to run us straight through to Busra.

As we steamed out of the harbor we were joined by two diminutive Japanese
destroyers which were to convoy us. The menace of the submarine being
particularly felt in the Adriatic, the transports travelled only by night
during the first part of the voyage. To a landsman it was incomprehensible
how it was possible for us to pursue our zigzag course in the inky
blackness and avoid collisions, particularly when it was borne in mind
that our ship was English and our convoyers were Japanese. During the
afternoon we were drilled in the method of abandoning ship, and I was put
in charge of a lifeboat and a certain section of the ropes that were to be
used in our descent over the side into the water. Between twelve and one
o'clock that night we were awakened by three blasts, the preconcerted
danger-signal. Slipping into my life-jacket, I groped my way to my station
on deck. The men were filing up in perfect order and with no show of
excitement. A ship's officer passed and said he had heard that we had
been torpedoed and were taking in water. For fifteen or twenty minutes we
knew nothing further. A Scotch captain who had charge of the next boat to
me came over and whispered: "It looks as if we'd go down. I have just seen
a rat run out along the ropes into my boat!" That particular rat had not
been properly brought up, for shortly afterward we were told that we were
not sinking. We had been rammed amidships by one of the escorting
destroyers, but the breach was above the water-line. We heard later that