cape jutted out into the ocean, and around this cape we were accustomed
to catch sight of the convoys first.

A sense of great expectancy was upon us. We had heard rumors of
submarines off the shore for several days. Then suddenly we heard a
terrific cannonading, and we knew that the transports and the convoys
were in a battle with the U-boats that had lain in wait for them. An
anxious hour passed. The sun was setting and the west was a great rose
blanket.

Then a shout went up far down the line of waiting Americans as the
first great transport swung around the cape. Then another, and a third
and a fourth, and finally a fifth; great gray bulks, two of them
camouflaged until you could not tell whether they were little
destroyers or a group of destroyers on one big ship. Then they got
near enough to see the American boys, thousands of them, lining the
railings. Through the glasses we could make out the names of the
transports. They were some of the largest that sail the Atlantic.
When as they came slowly in on the full tide, with that rose sunset
back of them, the bands on their decks playing across the waters, and
five thousand boys on the first boat singing "Keep the Home Fires
Burning," then the "Marseillaise," and finally "The Star-Spangled
Banner," in which the crowd on the shore joined, there was a Silhouette
of the Sea that burned its way into our souls.

There were the great ships, and beyond them the cape, and beyond that
the hovering dirigibles, and beyond them the great bird seaplanes, and
beyond them the background of a rose-colored sky, and beyond that the
memories of home.