stood out, facing the bullet-scarred Winter Palace, standing out dark-red above the snow.

A sense of utter desolation and tragedy laid over it all, the hopelessness of an abandoned city alive still with the memories of long-dead glories, of golden pomp and revelry. Somewhere on the other side of the river the crack of a rifle broke the frozen stillness, and a workman who was passing laughed savagely. A gust of icy wind sent a cloud of snow into my face, and a half-starving yellow dog, limping on three legs rubbed itself against my skirt, looking up at me with piteous eyes. And through the drifting snow the ghosts of Russia's greatness seemed to pass and vanish-men and women who had lived and died for Russia, whose heads were bent under the weight of intolerable shame.

On the last night before our morning start I walked home from a dinner in the Millionaia through a stillness that held something uncanny in its voiceless quiet. The streets seemed utterly deserted, only

once two workmen passed, dark, grotesque figures muffled in sheepskins, the points of their rifles black against the snow.

The heavy clouds had lifted, a few faint stars shone in the distant, blue darkness of the sky. The empty square showed an almost untrodden purity of snow. The fortress stood a dark shadow above the frozen river, dimly against the sky the spire of Peter and Paul reared a slender black finger, pointing to the stars.

Then the sudden roar and rattle of a motor broke the stillness; filled with a crowd of half-drunken soldiers, it passed down the quay, ploughing its way with difficulty through the heavy snow. Through the coarse, jeering laughter I caught the words, "Liberty-PeaceHurrah for Peace!"

Liberty and peace-while above the blue-and-silver city of dead Emperors hovered the shadow of German autocracy and German militarism and German power-like a great black monster ready to devour its prey.

SHE old petty officer in charge of the drills drew a deep breath and looked down the long lines of newly enlisted apprentice seamen. A few of the boys were from the poorer quarters of near-by cities and towns; some were from the farming districts; but the greater number were undergraduates from colleges and universities flocking to the colors at the first intimation of their country's need, and all were astonishingly transformed, by the mere donning of uniforms and caps, into potential sailors for the ships of the United States navy.

The petty officer cleared his throat. Somehow the sunshiny parade-ground, bordered by cheerful, yellow brick barracks and backed by the sparkling blue of Narragansett Bay and the distant, pointed spires of Newport churches, seemed too incongruously peaceful compared with the things. of which he was trying to speak. He cleared his throat again.

"I'd like to remind you, lads," he said, "that there are some things in our navy that you'll have to learn for yourselves. We can teach you the manual of arms and the drills; and there are schools here to train you for any branch of ship's work that you have a leaning toward-wireless, electricity, signal corps, hospital corps, engineering, cooking, and yeoman's work-but what you've got to get, if you're to be of any real use, is the spirit of the navy!

"Maybe there's those with education enough to explain that spirit to you. I haven't got the words. I only know what it means in actions. Summed up, it amounts to about this: aboard ship there ain't no you and there ain't no me; there's just Us! And we're working together under the flag of the finest country on earth.

"You lads have come away from your folks, and your homes, and your colleges to help get a bad job done; and when the job's finished some of you will go back to your colleges, and your folks, and your homes-and some won't.

"But if the ones that go back have gotten the real spirit of the navy-the spirit that was already strong when boys like you were rampaging over the seas on the old wooden ship Constellation that's tied up to the wharf here they'll go back, and carry with them through the remainder of their lives the knowledge that, in time of squalls, their hand was steady in the service of the rest of the ship; that they helped, to the end, the messmate that had fallen; and that, when it seemed like it was their turn next, they looked death straight in the eye. That's what we call the Spirit of the Navy. Don't forget it!

"Now! Atten-shun! I'll explain the anchor-watch to you."

The ship's doctor dropped stiffly into his seat at the ward-room luncheon-table and whimsically surveyed his brother officers. Perhaps he had grown accustomed to the white look of fatigue and tension that distinguishes the expression of the naval officers who, for months now, have faced death on destroyers and transports on the North Sea; perhaps his New England training came back to him in halfremembered sayings about enduring what can't be remedied, and the hopeful suggestions of turns in seemingly interminable roads. At any rate he ignored the obvious and soared, conversationally, into the cheerfully problematical.

"I've been wondering all morning if I hadn't better try out an unpatented invention of a Buddhist priest I saw in Japan," observed the doctor, helping himself to tinned sardines and damp crackers. "The old fellow was sweeping off the im

maculate white straw mats of a Kyoto temple, and as he frisked over to collect an entrance fee of me I noticed that both sides of his nose were securely plugged with wads of rice-paper.

"How come?" I questioned, pointing at them.

He waited devoutly, while some worshippers eased down on their fine work with the prayer-gong, before he answered, "Cold on the head, have got!" and intimated that much valuable time might be lost if he had to stop every time he needed to blow his nose; and besides, as he indulgently informed me, he hadn't ever owned a handkerchief. I've been thinking of trying his scheme out on the crew of this ship.

"They've every variety of cough and whoop, from the copy of a lyric cry to a replica of the Gregorian chant. I'll always remember this cruise by the opportunities I've had to study snuffles.'

The mess listened with a visible easing of tension. "If the old fellow's cold was really bad I should think his procedure would, in time, have made his brain come adrift. How did he breathe?" questioned the executive officer.

"Oh, he just let his mouth hang jauntily open. A nose isn't really a necessity any more than an appendix is; it's an ornament," said the doctor, cheerfully surveying the mess. "Of course, I don't mean that all noses are ornamental," he added, and dodged a cracker thrown by the navigator.

"Too bad you fellows can't get a glimpse of your great-great-great-grandchildren when the manufacturers of food substitutes, preservatives, and adulterations, and we surgeons have, by our combined and unceasing efforts, permanently divorced them from their unnecessary decorations. No teeth! No hair! No tonsils! No appendixes! No gall-bladders! No-but I'll spare you. It'll be a neat and trim population in those happy days," said the doctor with dramatic. airiness.

"My great-great-grandchildren!" observed the engineer officer, and glanced through the rain-streaked port-hole past which gray, foam-crested waves raced before the icy wind, under a heavy sky.

all knew that the engineer officer's firstborn had arrived in this warring world a month after its father had joined the ship, and except for photographs he had never seen it. His wife wrote of the baby's superlative beauty and charm and planned for the happy days of reunion, but somehow a shadowy foreboding that crouched behind her cheering words had eluded her and crept into the envelope to loom large when the letter was opened. The engineer officer broke the silence with hasty querulousness.

"Be thankful there's nothing worse than colds the matter with the crew," he admonished, and set his teeth under a swift stab of pain; for several days these attacks had come with increasing frequency and violence. "This is no time to get sick," his spirit asserted with grim anger at the inopportune besieger.

"What about my keeping in practice?" asked the doctor, and added: "These are queer days in the navy! I was talking with one of the petty officers who drilled the apprentice seamen at the training-station last summer, and the old fellow was upset! He had a big lot of boys fresh from different colleges to train, and they overturned all his previous experiences. He went carefully over the manual of arms with them the first day, and the next morning, to his amazed astonishment, they executed each order with unvarying precision.

"You know these exercises already?' he questioned bewilderedly.

"Why, yes,' answered one of the boys; 'you told them to us yesterday.'

"You see, the new apprentice seamen represented the college-trained product, to whom concentration is a necessity. The petty officer's experience had been with boys of less education, who learn by the frequent repetition of drilling, and drilling, and drilling—the mechanical action of untrained minds," explained the doctor.

"I should think that with such new material we could build up a magnificent. personnel," exclaimed the executive enthusiastically.

The doctor smiled. "You haven't been reading your little book of fables lately, or you'd remember that everything has

added: "The old classes of apprentice seamen hadn't trained minds, but most of them had learned the ground-plan rules of discipline-poverty generally inculcates that. The new boys don't know the meaning of the word! As far as they're concerned, it's an incoherent assortment of syllables made up from unintelligible letters.

"One indignant youth returned to the training-station to find that the ship he was assigned to had sailed. 'I like their nerve-going off without me!' he asserted in loud and righteous wrath to the petty officer engaged in warping him toward the brig. 'I sent them word that my mother had come up to see me, so they needn't expect me back until she'd left-and they've gone without waiting for me!'

"Another lad had been notified that he was to stand watch from four to eight, but some acquaintances motored over from Narragansett, so he sent a message to the captain that he wouldn't be able to get back until later, as he was to dine with friends at a restaurant which he ingenuously named. Imagine his resentful indignation when, just after the soup had been served, he was snatched into a standing position by an unsympathetic master-at-arms. I sent the captain word,' he expostulated. 'Is that so? What's a captain? 'Tis the admiral you should have notified,' commented the master-at-arms witheringly.

"This same boy is my hospital apprentice now, and he's as keen as a razor. He still grins sheepishly over his farewell dinner party, but he has ideas of his own! We have great arguments about a surgeon's privileges and responsibilities-" The doctor broke off and glanced about. "I don't eat more than the rest of you; I talk more," he explained, and turned his attention to his luncheon.

The engineer officer leaned forward. "What does your hospital apprentice think a surgeon's privileges are?" he asked idly.

"Oh, the right to decide whether the future holds enough for a patient to make his life worth living. I tell him that no one can guess what the future may hold," laughed the doctor.

Outside the wind was rising and the rain, like fine steel wires, whipped across

the port-holes as the ship, with undiminished speed, swept along on her prescribed course. "Nasty weather," commented the executive; then, struck by something in the engineer officer's face, asked: "What ails you? You look green and seasick!"

"Me seasick!" ejaculated the engineer, with ungrammatical scorn, as he pushed back his chair. "I've had a queer pain for two or three days. I may be around to see you later in the afternoon, doc." The doctor nodded hospitably. "I'm specializing on colds at present, but of course- He glanced keenly at the engineer officer. "Better come along with me now," he suggested.

The engineer shook his head. "I've several things to attend to," he said as he hurried away.

"He never thinks of any engines-except the ship's," complained the doctor, making his way back to his quarters and the routine duties of his afternoon.

The doctor's tiny office was also his consulting and operating room, and, after glancing about and noting that everything was in order and the apprentice at his post, he gave the signal for a bugler to sound sick-call.

"That's a pretty call," observed the apprentice as the birdlike crescendomuffled because of circumstancessounded through the narrow passages.

"Sounds all right to those who haven't anything the matter with them," growled the doctor, still bothered by the engineer officer's white face. "Here they come," he added as the distant chorus of coughs drew nearer.

"This beats the way doctors ashore sit around and wait for patients," observed the hospital apprentice conversationally; "here, when you're ready, you just have a bugle blown." He stepped back and busied himself with a tray of instruments as the doorway. filled with a group of sailors.

The doctor glanced keenly at his patients, while his capable hands moved swiftly: there were several burns to dress and rebandage, a wrenched arm to ease by a light sling, several decreasing colds to prescribe for, an injured foot to examine and pronounce cured, and one fe

verish boy to consign to the unblemished whiteness of the tiny sick-bay, where he could be under observation.

"We'll get into port day after to-morrow. If he develops anything in the meantime we'll be able to transfer him then to a hospital ashore," mused the doctor as the last patient filed out.

"Seems impertinent for a disease to attack a man when he's on such duty as this," observed the hospital apprentice, steadying himself as the ship, after climbing up the long, steep hill of a great wave, plunged sharply down into a yawning gulf.

"Last year at this time I was fiddling around Cambridge and Boston," said the apprentice reflectively, as he closed the cover of the sterilizer, "and my chief grievance was that my mother would keep urging me to go and see the Sargent and Abbey paintings in the public library; she wrote about them so often that it got on my nerves. It seems centuries ago!" "Did it get on your nerves enough to make you obey her?" questioned the doctor.

The hospital apprentice smiled. "No," he confessed, then added comfortably: "I'll go and see them after the war is over; there'll be lots of time for pictures then."

"You think you'll have learned by that time to obey orders?" asked the doctor. The apprentice laughed. "Discipline is now my middle name," he asserted genially.

The doctor, glancing about the tiny room, noted the immaculate orderliness of the compact arrangements, and thought: "I am lucky in getting that boy for a hospital apprentice. Come in!" he called, and started forward at sight of the engineer officer's drawn face.

"Yes?" questioned the doctor.

The engineer could hardly achieve a twisted, rueful smile. "I've had intermittent pain for nearly a week-but just now-something-must-have-happened," he gasped, and crumpled into a limp heap. The doctor groaned as he felt the feverish hands and wrists. "Why couldn't he have given me a chance before it wore him out?" he demanded of the appalled apprentice as the engineer officer

There followed some moments of minute examination and a hurried conference with the captain and executive officer.

"The fever is rising-perforated appendix, I think. Ought to operate at oncealthough it's pretty rough," commented the doctor with laconic brevity. "I'll do all I can to hold him over until we get in to port, but, of course, I won't wait a minute if in my opinion the operation becomes necessary. Too bad they didn't teach us to operate while doing gymnastic exercises at our hospital! But there are fairly smooth spaces when the ship is climbing a wave.'

The doctor went back to the engineer's cabin and relieved the hospital apprentice. "You'd better get everything ready

in case I need them. And keep watch of that boy in the sick-bay; if his temperature goes up call me," said the doc. tor, as he settled down in a chair by the narrow bunk.

The engineer officer, opening tired eyes, looked at the doctor's kindly face. Beastly poor taste for me to cave in now," he said, and hesitated. "Is itanything serious?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head. "The usual common or garden variety of appendicitis; you should have come to me before. Earlier there was a chance of my being able to reduce the inflammation, but now I'll probably have to operate," he said.

The engineer officer drew a deep breath. "The pain-is almost unbearable," he whispered between clinched teeth, his face wet with perspiration.

The afternoon dragged by, punctuated by the creaking of straining bulkheads, the racing of the screw, the shrieking of wind and lashing of rain, as the ship forged ahead through the mist.

By evening there was no chance, in the doctor's opinion, of avoiding the operation.. He leaned over the engineer officer and told him this decision, even as he realized that the wide, shining eyes held no glance of comprehension. A few minutes later they carried the oblivious engineer through narrow passages to the tiny operating-room, where the hospital apprentice, inwardly quaking under the