Sea Warfare

east wind, the enemy, and some few our ships. Behind him there are towns, with M.P.'s attached, who a little while ago didn't see the reason for certain lighting orders. When a Zeppelin or

plashing about decks barefoot, and now check and issue stores to the ravenous, untruthful fleets. Said one of these, guarding a collection of desirable things, to a cross between a sick-bay attendant and a junior writer (

at my nex

tise forgery, or I'd be in gaol. Engineer-Commanders? Engineer-Lootenants? They're worse!... Look here! If my own mother was to come to me beggin' brass

could hear his neighbour speak just then) should be hove overboard. Upon which the gunner rushed forward and made other signs that they were "on charge," and must be tallied and accounted for. He, too, was trained in a strict school. Upon which the lieutenant, but

orders in action. The Gunner was right. Empty cases are on charge. No one ought to chuck 'em away that way, but.... Damn it, they

tle T

m when he moves, and in so entertaining him that he shall not have time to draw clear before a blow descends on him from another qu

sers. At this point, the equation generally stops; if it continued, it would end mathematically in the whole of the German Fleet coming out. Then another factor which we may call the Grand Fleet would come from another place. To change the comparisons: the Grand Fleet is the "strong left" ready to give the knock-out blow on the point of the chin when the he

n men drown. They can realise what it is when women go down choking in horrible tangles and heavings of draperies. To say that the enemy has cut himself from the fellowship of all who use the seas is rather understating the case. As a man

of fishing, had discovered his real vocation. "I never thought I'd like killin

ual game of finding, springing, and laying traps on the least as well as the most likely runaways that ships use-such sea snaring and wiring as the world never dreamt of. We are hampered in this, because

nd the

ng efforts and her natural curiosity, got herself as thoroughly mixed up with the field as a camel among tent-ropes. A destroyer's bows are very fine, and her sides are very straight. This causes her to cleave the wave with the minimum of disturbance, and this boat had no desire to cleave anything else. None the less, from time to time, she heard a mine grate, or tinkle, or jar (I could not arrive at the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant) on her plates. Sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began to hope she was clear. At other times they were numerous, but when at last she seemed to have worried out of the danger zone lieutenant and sub together left the bridge for a cup of tea. ("In those days we took min

in my bunk, too. That was all right. So I think, now

to take mines awfully seriously in those days. One comfort is, Frit

?" I want

lung under his counter. He brought the beastly thing in to analyse. The rest of his squad

irable

a multi-millionaire's private yacht. In her mixture of stark, carpetless, curtainless, carbolised present, with voluptuously curved, broad-decked, easy-stairwayed past, she might be Queen Guinevere in the convent at Amesbury. And her Lieutenant-Commander, most careful to pay all due compliments to Admirals who were midshipmen when he was a Commander, leads a congregation of very hard men indeed. They do precisely what he tell

time?" I asked of

ou'll tell me what he won't do, it 'ud be more to

d Mat

wn boats. This is a waste of good material. Nobody wants amateur navigators-the traffic lanes are none too wide as it is. But these gentlemen ought to be distributed among the Trawler Fleet as strictly combatant officers. A trawler skipper may be an excellent seaman, but slow with a submarine shelling and diving, or in cutting out enemy trawler

is brewed fresh and

t-breezes blow str

sing: "What an enj

he North

bits is our busin

are mine-fields wh

lar wish to die quick

he North S

disaster the m

gh dudgeon our

grousing at do

e lights on the

verses o

ving, half drowned

out through the s

opellers roar: "Wr

Hell as the Nor

TR