We had not been on this transport very long when we had our first introduction to bully beef and biscuits.  Bully beef is known to civilians the world over as corned beef, and to the new Sammy as “red horse.”  But even bully beef and biscuits aren’t so bad, and our thoughts were not so much on what we were getting to eat as on when we were getting to France.

As the hours went by we more and more eagerly craned our necks over the deck rails, trying to pierce the darkness of the deep for one flash of light that might mean France hard ahead.  But nothing happened, and one after another the watchers dropped off to sleep.

When dawn broke we woke and rubbed our eyes.  We were mystified and not a little mortified.  Where was France?  There was nothing but water, blue as heaven itself, around us.  We were still at sea, and still going strong.

The hours of that day dragged out to an interminable length.  No one spoke of the matter—­the question of land in sight was not discussed.  Some of the boys went back to poker.  Others decided to be seasick, and subsequently wished for a storm and the consequent wrecking of the ship, with a watery death as relief.

Bully beef and biscuits at noon; bully beef and biscuits at our evening meal, and no sight of land.  Night came.  The more hopeful of us did the craning business over the deck rails for a few more hours.  The pessimistic, deciding France had ceased to be, returned to poker.  We slept.  We woke.  We watched the sun rise—­over the sea!

About noon that day after the ration of bully beef had gone its round and we, in consequence, were feeling pretty blue, there was a group of us standing around doing nothing.  Suddenly Tom King came rushing up in great excitement.  He had had an idea.

“Say, you fellows, I don’t care a darn what any of you may say, I believe these blinkin’ English are sick of us and are sending us back to Canada!”

No such luck.  Before sundown that evening we sighted land.  We steamed slowly into the port of St. ——.  This is a large seaport town near the Bay of Biscay, on the southwest coast of France.  Why in the world they wanted to take us all the way round there, I don’t know.  I was told that we were among the first British troops to be landed at this port.

As soon as we disembarked from the boats that evening, before we left the docks, we were issued goat-skin coats.  The odor which issued from them made us believe that they, at least in some former incarnation, had belonged to another little animal family known as the skunk.  Ugh!  The novelty of these coats occupied us for a while, and if a sergeant or a comrade addressed us we answered in “goat talk”:  “Ba-a-a, ba-a-a-a....”

It was apparent that the secrecy of troop transportation which held in England held also in France.  The populace could not have known of our coming, for there was no scene, nor was there a reception.  We were to meet with that later on.