H.M.S. ----

CHANCES.

The boxing-stage was raised a clear three and a half feet above the deck, and the mat showed glaringly white in the northern sunshine. The corner-posts were padded and wound with many layers of red and blue bunting. A glance round showed a great amphitheatre of faces, rising tier on tier up to the crouching figures of men on the main-derrick, funnel-casings, and masts. The spectators numbered, perhaps, close on three thousand, and there was hardly a man among them who had not qualified as a critic by personal experience at the game. The last two competitors had just left the ring in a storm of hand-clapping, and the white-sweatered seconds ceased their professional chatter and their basin-splashing employment to jump up and place the chairs back against the corner-posts as the next two officers entered.

Lieutenant Cairnley of H.M. T.B.D. —— pulled the loose sleeves of his monkey-jacket across his chest and stretched out his legs as he sat down in the Blue corner. He looked across at his opponent, who was standing talking in a low voice to a second. Yes, he was evidently only just inside the middle-weight limit, and he, Cairnley, must be giving away all of half a stone. Still, that was half a stone less to carry about the ring, and he felt really fit and well-trained. An officer was standing in the ring, with a paper in one hand, and the other raised to call for silence.

"First round of the Officers' Middle-weights. In the Red corner, Lieutenant Santon of the——, in the Blue corner, Lieutenant Cairnley of the——." He slipped under the ropes and jumped down from the stage as the voice of the timekeeper followed his own—"Seconds out!" Cairnley felt the coat plucked from his shoulders, and he stood up as his chair was drawn away. "Clang!" went the heavy gong, and he walked forward with his right hand out and his eyes on his opponent's chest, in the midst of a great silence. As their gloves touched, Cairnley jumped quickly to one side and began his invariable habit of working round to his opponent's left hand. He was not allowed much time for "routine work." He had an impression of a looming figure getting larger, a whirl of feinting, and he was being rushed back across the ring in a storm of punches. His habit of keeping his chin down, shoulders up, and elbows in, saved him. He felt a thrill of respect for Santon's punch as his head rocked from heavy hook-blows on either side, and then he was inside his opponent's elbows, working his head forward, and lowering his right for a body punch before they struck the ropes. As he felt their springing contact at his back, he stiffened up and pushed his man away. The recoil of the hemp assisted him, and Santon gave ground a yard. Cairnley jumped at him, and, taking an even chance, sent a straight right over, which landed cleanly on the mouth. His left followed at once, but only touched lightly. Santon gave ground again, and the lighter man slid after him, sending a long left home to the nose. Cairnley thrilled as it landed. This man was strong, he felt, but not quick enough in defence. He half-feinted with his right, and sent his left out again. As the punch extended he slightly lifted his chin, and the ring whirled round him as he took a tremendous cross-counter that came in over his elbow. He came forward quickly to get to close quarters, but his opponent had no intention of letting him. There was a whirl of gloves and a sound of heavy, grunting hitting, and Cairnley found himself on his hands and knees, with a very groggy feeling in his head, looking across at Santon's white knees by the ropes at the far side of the ring. He stretched his neck, took a long breath, and rose shakily. He did not feel as shaky as he looked, for he had been in the ring before, and knew that a knock-down blow sometimes entraps the optimistic giver of it into sudden defeat, but in this case he was engaged with a boxer who took no chances. Santon approached quickly and began rapid feinting just outside hitting distance. Cairnley gave ground slightly and waited for the rush. This chap had a wicked right, he reflected, and he did not want to get caught napping again. Then Santon was on him slamming in lefts and rights, and working furiously to get him into a corner. Cairnley stooped and struggled to get in close. A muscular change in the body a foot from his eyes gave him warning of an approaching upper-cut, and he brought his right glove in front of his face in time to stop it. He felt Santon's left on the back of his head, and instantly shifted feet and escaped round his opponent's left side. As he shifted he jerked a hard, short left punch into the mark, and then repeated the blow. Santon broke away, and received a perfectly-timed straight left on the nose as the gong rang. There was a storm of applause as the men went to their corners, for Cairnley's recovery had been well guarded, and his quick hitting at the end of the round showed that he had not lost much speed. He lay back in his chair while his seconds fussed around him, and thought hard. That right cross-counter of Santon's was certainly a beauty, so much so that it must be his favourite punch. Could he be absolutely certain of its being produced if he gave it the same chance? Well, he had to win this on a knock-out, or not at all. He could not pick up all the points he had lost in the first round with only two to go, so it was a case of chancing it on his brains alone. Yes, he would just check his idea once, and if that proved that Santon would use the same punch for the same lead, he would go all out on the next. Clang! He rose and walked straight forward to meet his man. At six-feet range he jumped in and drove his left for the mark. It did not land true, but it enabled him to close and start a succession of furious body punches. The two hammering, gasping white figures reeled about the ring for half a minute, heads down and arms working like pistons.

Cairnley knew that his man was too strong for him at that game, but for that round, brain and not muscle was his guide, and he wanted Santon to be warmed up and made to act by habit and use. They locked in a clinch, and a moment later broke clear at the word of the Referee—the first he had spoken in that fight. For a second they stood on guard swaying from side to side as they waited for an opening. Then Cairnley leaped in and sent out a full straight left. Even with his chin tucked well down he felt the jar of the right that slid again over his elbow, and striking full on the cheek, made his head ring and his neck ache. He stopped the left that followed, then landed on the face with his own left and closed again to hammer in short arm punches. He felt as he did so that the work he was engaged on must be done soon, as at this high-speed work he would not have the strength for a hard punch for long. Santon appeared to be a little inclined for a rest, too, for it was he who clinched this time. Cairnley rested limply against him and took a long breath as the voice of the Referee called them apart. He caught his breath again and called up all his reserve strength as they posed at long range, then he jumped forward as before, sent his left out three-quarters of the way, and showed his chin clear of his chest. Without a check in the movement his left dropped, his body pivoted, and he sent a full "haymaker" right up and across to the half-glimpsed head in front of him. A bony right wrist glanced from the top of his bent head, and at the same instant a jar, from his right knuckles to his back, told him that brains had beaten skill. He slipped aside, his hands mechanically raised in defence, and stumbled over Santon's falling body. As he scrambled up to cross the ring he looked back, and knew at once that not ten nor twenty seconds would be enough for that limp figure to recover in.

II.

"Yes, I've got leave now, and Cairnley's in hospital; he had a couple of splinters in him, and they packed him off, though he wanted to get leave and treat himself. The old packet's got to be just about rebuilt from the deck up, and he's certain to get a bigger one instead. He's going to take me on with him,—good thing for me,—as I'll be pretty young to be Number One of one of the Alpha class ships. I tell you, it was a devilish funny show, and all over in a second. It came on absolute pea-soup at four and we had only heard the guns in the action. Never saw a thing. We had been out away from the line four hours. Had nothing but wireless touch to tell us they had got into a mix-up. We went to stations at full speed trying to close on them, and we'd hardly got ready when the Hun showed up four hundred yards off. My word! she was smart on it. She was only a cruiser, but in the fog she showed up like the Von der Tann, and she was going all of twenty-four. She let fly at the moment we saw her, and she spun round and charged right off. We let go too as she fired, but her turning to ram saved her. We turned too and bolted, and she just cut every darned thing down from the casing up. The mast went on the first salvo, one funnel and most of the guns. The shooting was just lovely, and if it hadn't been such close range we'd have been shot down in one act. As it was, they just shaved us clean as if we'd gone full speed under a low-level bridge. At six hundred yards we could only see her gun-flashes, and we yanked round across her bow and opened out. The skipper gave her five minutes and then levelled up on the same course we had been on before, and eased a bit to keep station on her beam. We did a bit of clearing up and he sent for me. He was on the bridge—which had damn little left on it, bar him,—it was a proper wreck—and told me to arrange hands to shout orders to the engine-room if required, as the telegraphs were gone. The wheel was all right—or at least the gearing was,—the wheel itself had only a bit of rim and two spokes on it. He told me to get what fish we could fire set for surface, and that he was going to go for her again and fire at twenty-five yards. I thought he was mad, but I went down and got 'em ready. (The gunner was killed.) I shouted up to him when I had done, and had mustered a tube's crew, and we whacked on full bat again and began to close. You see we had crossed her bow once, and Cairnley reckoned then that she would have altered back to her original course of East, so he had kept on her port beam at about a mile, going the same speed. I did not get what he was driving at till afterwards. At the time I thought he was just going to do it again, because he thought he ought to make another effort. We saw her first this time as we were closing on the opposite side, and the skipper told them to poop off the bow gun, which was all we had, to wake them up. They woke up all right, and we got the same smack from all along her side we'd had before. She was just abaft our starboard beam going the same course, and I was wondering what the deuce he'd meant by telling me to train the tubes to port, when we went hard a-port and came round all heeled over and shaking. I just thought to myself, Well, if the Hun keeps on and doesn't try to ram, we're going to look damn silly, when I saw her again and she was ramming. Her guns did no good then,—the change was too quick for any sights to be held on. He banged away all right, and I believe he put more helm on—but he couldn't get us. The skipper had said twenty-five yards, but it looked to me like feet. He was going all out, and so were we, and I pulled off as his stem showed abreast the tubes—all spray and grey paint—and those fish hit him abaft the second funnel. Eh? Well, perhaps it was a few yards, but it's the closest I've seen to going alongside a gangway. Well, that's all I knew about it for half an hour. The bang put me out. Skipper said he turned back and searched for her, but it was so thick then he couldn't have found an island except by mistake. We'd been hit below water too and couldn't steam much. We got a tow home. Good egg! Here's St Pancras, and there's a flapper—thirty if she's a day—Good old blinkin' London!"

THE QUARTERMASTER.

A LANDFALL.

The dawn came very slowly—a faint glow in the sky spreading until first the streaming forecastle and then the dirty-yellow seas could be seen. The destroyer was steaming slowly along the coast with the wind just before the beam. She made bad weather of it, lurching at extraordinary angles from side to side, yawing from two to four points off her course, and throwing her stern up as each wave passed under her, until the water spouted in the wake of her slowly-moving propellers. The wind and the mist had come together, and the visibility extended to perhaps three or four foaming wave-crests away. They knew within a dozen miles where they were, but a dozen miles is too vague a reckoning to make a mine-guarded harbour from, and her captain, with the greatest respect for the fact that he was on a dead lee shore, and a most inhospitable and rocky shore at that, was feeling for the land with an order for "Hard-over" helm running through his head. Occasionally he ceased his staring out on the lee bow to look back along the deck. The sight each time made him frown and tighten his lips. The beam-sea was sweeping across the ship regularly every half-minute. The water shot across her 'midships three feet deep, and foaming like a Highland burn in spate. The squat funnels showed through the turmoil of water and spray, streaked diagonally upwards with crusted white salt, through which showed patches of red funnel-scale; from them came a steady roaring note—the signal of suppressed power below them. Battened-down as she was, he knew that the hatches were not submarine ones; built as they were on a foundation little thicker than cardboard, they could not keep out such seas, and he visualised the turmoil and discomfort there must be beneath him on the flooded decks. He, personally, had not seen in what state she was below, having been on the bridge for the last nine hours, but he felt he would like to take a look at his own cabin and see if his worst foreboding—a foot of water washing to and fro across a sodden carpet—was true.

He glanced at his wrist-watch, and then to the east. Half-past seven and full daylight. Well, he thought, it might as well be just dawning still for all the light there was. Air and sea were the same colour, a creamy dull white, and they merged into one at a range of perhaps five hundred yards. If only he could—he raised his head sharply and turned to face out on the beam. Bracing his feet and gripping the rail with wet-gloved fingers he held his breath in an intensity of listening concentration. Yes, it was clearer that time, a faint high whine broad on the beam. He walked, timing the roll so that he had no need to clutch for support, to where the helmsman crouched over a wildly swinging compass-card, and gave an order. The destroyer came bowing and dipping round till she met the full drive of the sea ahead. With a roar and a crash the water tumbled in over the forecastle, shaking the bridge, and falling in tons over the ladders on to the upper deck. The destroyer still turned, shaking from end to end, until she had the sea on the other bow. The telegraph reply-gongs rang back the acknowledgment of an order, and easing to barely steerage-way, the ship settled in her new position—hove-to in the direction from which she had come overnight. The faint sound he had heard had seemed too distant for the captain to be assured of his position, and until he could hear it clearly and from fairly close he was not going to risk taking a departure from it. He knew that hove-to as she was the destroyer was going to be driven closer in, and with a steep-to shore he could allow her to accept the leeway for some time. He moved across and stood on the other side of the bridge, looking out to leeward, his attitude less strained and anxious now, as the ship was making fairly easy weather of it. The motion, it is true, was far more uncomfortable. She sidled, dived, and wallowed in a way that would have thrown a man unaccustomed to T.B.D.'s completely off his feet; but far less water was coming aboard, and the amount that did so arrived on a bearing from which she was better fitted to receive it. At the end of twenty minutes the captain began to resume his rigid attitude. There was something wrong somewhere. Sounds came erratically through fog, but this could not be counted on. He knew he had made no mistake in the sound he had heard. It was certainly the high note of the lighthouse, and not a steamer's whistle. The low note should have been heard in between the high ones, but the fact of not having heard the low was not surprising to him. One seldom heard both notes in a fog. But this silent gap was a nuisance, considering the rate at which they must be closing the land. At half an hour from his first hearing the sound he turned uphill to gain the wheel again, but froze still as the voice of the fog-horn came afresh, this time with no possibility of doubt. A great thuttering roar broke out, as it seemed, almost overhead, a deep bass note that made the air quiver. The captain jumped amidships and barked an order. The wheel spun hard down and the telegraphs whirred round, bringing the destroyer diving and leaping back head to sea. Looking aft, the captain had a glimpse of three pinnacle rocks showing a moment in the trough between two seas, and then the fog shut down over them again, leaving only the regular deep roar of the fog-signal, that grew gradually fainter astern. Two points at a time he eased the ship round till she was hove-to on the opposite tack, then he called to another oilskinned figure that stood swaying to the roll by the helmsman. "Will you take her now?" he said; "I am going to look for some breakfast. Hold her like this half an hour, and then turn her down wind for the run in. The tide's setting us well round the point now. All right?"

"Yes, sir. I'll lay it off again on the chart before I turn. That was a queer hole in the fog, sir."

"Yes, quite a big blank. Glad it wasn't much bigger. Still, we could see four cables under the land, and the land's alright if you've got your stern to it."

With a huge yawn of relief he stretched his arms back and up, then started down the thin iron ladder on his perilous trip to the inevitable chaos and confusion of his cabin.

NIGHT ROUNDS.

It was a dark night with no moon, while only occasionally could a star be seen from the leader's bridge. The next astern could be made out by the bands of blue-white phosphorescence that fell away from her bow, but the rest of the line was quite invisible. The flotilla slid along at a pace that to them was only a jog-trot, but which would have been considered rather too exciting for night work by the big ships. The night was calm, with hardly a breath of wind, while the hush—hush—hush from the bow-waves seemed to accentuate the silence and to increase the impression the destroyers gave of game moving down on a tiptoe of expectancy to the drinking-pool, ready at a sight or sound to spring to a frenzy of either offensive or defensive speed. On the leader's bridge men spoke in low tones, as if afraid that they might be overheard by the enemy—actually to enable them to listen better to whatever sound the echoes from the sea might carry. On bridges and at gun-stations look-outs stared out around them at the night, and there was no need for the officers to be anxious as to whether their men kept good watch or slept. The crews knew the rules of destroyer-war in the Narrow Seas—that "The first one to see, shoots; and the first one to hit, wins." It is true that they did not always see first. There were exceptions. Not so long before, they had been seen at a range of perhaps half a mile by an officer on the low unobtrusive conning-tower of a submarine. This officer had instantly and accurately smitten on the back of the head the sailor who shared his watch, and had rapped out one word "Down!" The sailor (evidently quite accustomed to this procedure) had vanished down the conning-tower like a falling stone, the officer's boots chasing the man's hands down the ladder-rungs. The lid had clanked down and locked just a few seconds before a little "plop" of water closed over the swirling suction that showed where a big patrol submarine had been. The boat was English (that is to say, her Captain was Scotch, and her First Lieutenant Canadian, while the remainder of her officers and men together could hardly have mustered half a dozen men from the Home Counties), but she had no intention of risking explanations at short range with her own friends. She had been warned of their coming, but she looked on it as a piece of extraordinarily bad luck to have been met with at visibility range on such a dark night and to have been inconvenienced into a matter of ninety feet in a hurry. But it is known that submarines dive for almost everything and swear at everybody.

As the flotilla moved on its way a portent showed on the bow to landward. A faint red glow began to light up the low clouds over the Belgian frontier, and the bridge look-outs whispered together as they watched it brighten. As it grew clearer it showed to be not one light, but a rapid-running succession of instantaneous lights far inland. The white pencil of a searchlight beam showed and swung to the zenith and back—perhaps half-way between the watchers and the flicker in the sky. Ten minutes later, as the light drew farther aft, a faint murmur of sound (that began as a mere suspicion, and grew to be unmistakably but barely audible) announced the origin of the glow.

On the leader's bridge the tall officer in the overcoat spoke to the shorter one in the "lammy." "That's a bit on the big side for a night raid—they must be attacking round by——"

"Yes, sir; there's something like what they call 'drum-fire' going on. Wonder why they put searchlights on for it, though?"

"Can't guess. They'll have 'em on on the coast in a minute too, if I know them. Perhaps when they hear guns inland they think it's airbombs coming down. There they go! Two of 'em——"

The searchlights came on together, and on such a clear and dark night they seemed startlingly close. They swept the heavens over and back, steadied awhile pointing inland, and went out again, leaving an even inkier blackness than before, and setting the watchers blinking and rubbing their dazzled eyes. Away to the south-east the pulsating growl of the guns continued, though the breadth and height of the glow in the sky was gradually decreasing.

"There isn't any fighting on near the coast now, sir. That must be away down in France. If they'd only fire slow we'd be able to get a sort of range by the flash."

"You'd have to hold your watch for some time, then," said the taller officer. "I haven't the inland geography well enough in my head to say where it is, but that scrap's nearer seventy than sixty miles from here. Good Lord! And I suppose we'll read in the papers when we get in that 'there was activity at some points.'"

"And from here it looks like Hell. What it must be like close to——! Wish we could run up one of the canals and join in, sir."

"You'd be too late if we could. It's dying out now. Just as well, too; it keeps all the look-outs' heads turned that way. How's the time? All right, we'll turn now and try back."

The glow faded and passed, and left the velvety dark as blank as before. The leader swung round on a wide curve, and, as if held by one long elastic hawser, the flotilla followed in her gleaming wake. At the same cantering speed as they had come, they started on the long beat back of their bloodthirsty prowl, at the moment when the Scotch submarine officer turned over the watch to his Canadian subordinate.

"I've sheered right out now, and they ought to be clear of us all right, but keep your eyes skinned for them and nip under if you see them again. They're devilish quick on the salvoes in this longitude, and 'pon my soul I don't blame 'em either."

IN THE BARRED ZONE.

A MATTER OF ROUTINE.

There was little or no wind, and only a gentle swell from the south. The ships rose and fell lazily as they steamed to the south-eastward, while only occasionally a handful of light spray fell across a sunlit forecastle, drying almost as it fell. But if the air was still the ships were certainly not so—as vast as a great moving town, the Fleet was travelling at the speed of a touring car. From the Flagship's foretop the view was extraordinary. Destroyers or light cruisers when pressed seem to be slipping along with something always in hand and with no apparent effort; a battleship, however, seen under the same conditions, makes one think of St Paul's Cathedral being towed up the Thames; she carries a "bone in her teeth," and her bows seem to settle low and her stern to rise. In this case the Grand Fleet was hurrying—moving south-east at full speed, because—well, they might just cut the enemy off; but the Hun was canny, and knew exactly the danger-limit in this game of "Prisoner's base."

The visibility was good, and as far as the eye could see the water was torn and streaked with the wakes of ships—cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and craft of every queer and imaginable warlike use. The great mass of steel hulls had one thing only in common—they could steam, and could steam always with something in hand above the "speed of the Fleet." From the ships came a faint brown haze of smoke that shimmered with heat and made the horizon dance and flicker. From the foretop, looking aft, it seemed incredible that there could be any power existing which could drive such a huge beamy hulk as the Flagship was, and leave such a turmoil of torn and flattened water astern. Battleships in a hurry are certainly not stately; an elderly matron in pursuit of a tram-car shows dignity compared to any one of them. But if they looked flustered and undignified, they carried a cargo which no one could smile at. "Battleships are mobile gun-platforms." I forget who said that—probably Admiral Mahan—but it is true; and if these ships showed an ungraceful way of moving, they certainly complied with the definition of gun-platforms. The low-sloped turrets all pointed the same way—out to the starboard bow. The long tapering guns moved up and down, following the horizon against the roll, and sighing as they moved, as if the hydraulic engines were weary of the long wait. On the tops of the turrets the figures of officers could be seen pacing to and fro across the steel—checking now and then to stare at the southern horizon. Somewhere out there beneath the blazing sun were the scouts, and beyond them—well, that question was one that the scouts were there to answer. The smaller ships in sight seemed like motor-cycle pacers escorting a long-distance foot-race. With their sterns low and their bow-waves running back close to the beautifully-shaped hulls, they gave the impression of sauntering along at their leisure and of looking impatiently over their shoulders at the big heavy-weights astern of them. A destroyer division suddenly heeled and altered course like redshank, each ship turning as the leader swung, and with a fountain of spray at their sharp high stems they cut through the intervals of a Battleship division, swinging up again together to the south-east course as they cleared. The watcher in the top had seen the trick before, but familiarity could not prevent his eyes from widening a little as he saw the stem of his next astern throw up a little cloud of spray as it met the foaming V-wake that followed a few yards from the leader's counter. He smiled as he thought of an old picture in 'Punch' of a crowd of small children urging and dragging a huge policeman along to a scene of disturbance. The darting, restless destroyers seemed like the small bloodthirsty boys—hurrying on ahead to see the fun, and then back to wait for the ponderous but willing upholder of the law—anxious to miss nothing of the excitement.

The Fleet was running down to intercept, and might be in action at any moment if the luck held, but there was no signalling or outpouring of instructions. There was just nothing to be said. Everybody knew more or less what the tactical situation was; all knew that the enemy might be met with any time in the next few hours, but in the turrets the guns' crews proceeded with the all-important task of getting outside as much dinner as they could comfortably stow. The procedure of endeavouring to meet the High Sea Fleet and of dealing with it on sight had been rehearsed so often, that the real thing, if it came, would call for one signal only, and no more. Many prophets have said that the increase of Science and Applied Mechanics in the Navy would make men into mere slaves of machines, and into unthinking units. This is another theory which has been shown to be hopelessly wrong—certainly so in the Navy, as in it both officers and men are taught, and have to be taught, far more of the reasons for and the object aimed at in the Rules for Battle than ever Nelson thought it necessary to communicate to his subordinates in the last Great War. The Prussian system may be good, but it produces a bludgeon—ours produces the finest tempered blade.

The sight from the foretop was a thing that one would remember all one's life, and be thankful not to have missed. The almost incalculable value of the great mass of ships—the whirl of figures conjured up by a rough estimate of the collective horse-power and the numbers of men present; the attempt and failure to even count the actual ships in sight; the vision of a scared and wondering neutral tramp lying between the lines with engines stopped as the great masses of grey-painted steel went past her along the broad highroads of churned water,—this was the Fleet at sea; and the known fact that it would wheel, close, or spread at the word of one man, from the ships that foamed along four hundred yards away to those whose mastheads could only just be seen above the horizon, made the wonder all the greater. One thought of the thousands of eyes looking south in the direction of the big gun-muzzles, of the shells that the guns held rammed close home to the rifling, and of the thousands of brains that were turning over and over the old question, "Is it to be this time, or have they slipped in again?"...

WHO CARES?

THE UNCHANGING SEX.

TWO CHILDREN.

His age was possibly nineteen, and his general appearance had decided the members of his last gunroom mess in their choice of a nickname for him. "Little Boy Blue," or "Boy" for short, would probably stick to him throughout his naval career. The name had certainly followed him to his present appointment as "third hand" of a destroyer, where the other sub-lieutenants of the flotilla were not likely to allow him to forget it. He would have made a perfect model for a Burne-Jones angel. His mother would have worded that comparison differently, being under the impression that no angel could hope to equal him: on his part, he always took most filial care not to disillusion her on such a point. At the moment, in the first flush of glory induced by the fact that he had left gunroom life for ever, and that his midshipman's patches were things of the recent past, he was making the most of a week's leave, and making the most also of the opportunity of cultivating the society of a home Attraction whom the discerning eyes of his mother may or may not have yet noticed. The Attraction was aged sixteen, extremely pretty, and, as is usual in such cases, extremely self-possessed.

The Boy, as he accompanied her along the garden path, was not feeling self-possessed at all. He had discovered from frequent experience that the only position he could retain with reference to the lady as she walked was, as he would put it, "half a cable on the starboard quarter." Knowing as he did that he was being kept thus distant by intention, he followed the broad lines of strategy which his naval training had taught him, and acted in a way which on such occasions is always right—that is, he aroused doubt and curiosity in the mind of his adversary.

The lady, who—carrying a ball of string in one hand and a bowl of peas in the other—had walked in cool silence for at least fifty yards, turned suddenly and spoke.

"I suppose this is the first time you've——What are you staring at?"

The Boy blushed at once. "I beg your pardon," he murmured; "I——"

"Is my hair coming down?"

The Boy looked fixedly again at a large black bow which, as he told me afterwards, "held the bight of it up." "No-o," he said slowly.

"Then don't stare at it, and don't lag behind. What was I saying?"

"You asked me how long leave I'd got."

"I didn't—you've told me that, and anyhow I've forgotten. I was going to ask you if this is the first time you've done any war-work."

"Yes, I was out in the Straits till last Thursday week, and——"

"Don't be silly. I mean work like this, digging and doing without things, and helping, and so on."

"Yes, I suppose it is. I haven't had time, really——"

The lady turned on him in righteous scorn. "Time—oh, you're one of the worst I know. Won't you ever take the war seriously? You just look on it all as a joke, and you won't make any sacrifices. Now come here—take the other end of this string, and lay it out till I tell you to stop."

The Boy meekly obeyed instructions. He pegged the end of the string firmly down and returned to the Attraction, who was engaged in hunting out a hoe from among a litter of horticultural implements that lay in a corner of the garden wall. He stood watching her for a moment, and with her eyes away from him, his attitude altered slightly and became almost proprietary, while his face seemed to harden a shade and give an inkling of the naval stamp that it would develop later on. She looked round suddenly and saw him again as a shy and awkward youth.

"Have you done it?" she said. "All right, you can really start doing some work now. I'm going to make you dig a trench. That's the best way to serve your country when you're ashore and have the chance. And to think you've never used a hoe before!"

The Boy scraped the hoe reflectively with the toe of his boot. It did not seem to him politic to mention the fact that vegetable gardens do not usually grow either on the decks of battleships or on the shell-beaten slopes of Gallipoli. He made no attempt to follow the tortuous wanderings of a feminine mind, but held on his own course. "Are you going to help?" he said.

"No. You'd only loaf at the work if I did, and I've got other things to do, too. Now, come along and start, or you'll never get it finished by to-night."

"I'm leaving to-morrow," said the Boy.

"So you've told me—heaps of times to-day. But you must finish that trench before you go."

The Boy nodded and walked away towards the pegged-out end of the string. The lady, without turning her head, walked back up the path until she came to the grassy slope at its end. Selecting a spot from which a view could be obtained through the hedge of her oppressed admirer, she sat down and carefully laid the basin of peas on the bank beside her.

"He's rather a dear," she observed cautiously to herself. "But he is such a child. 'Wonder why boys are always so awfully young compared to women?"

The flotilla would have turned round for its run back in another half-hour if the last destroyer in the enemy's line had not shown a faint funnel-glare for the fractional part of a second. They were only a couple of miles from the end of the "beat" when it showed, and considering the poor visibility that accompanied the frequent snow-showers, it was a piece of happy luck that the glare was seen at all. Three people on the leader's bridge saw it together; two of them gave a kind of muffled yelp, as foxhound puppies would at sight of their first cub, while the third gave an order on the instant. The destroyer settled a little by the stern, her course altered slightly, and she began really to travel. For some hours she had been jogging along at seventeen knots, but her speed now began to rise in jumps of five knots at a time, till in a few minutes she had become a mad and quivering fabric of impatient steel. As she gained her speed the snow began to pour down again, blotting out the faint shadow that had meant the bow of her next astern. The Captain glanced aft once, and then continued his intent gazing forward. He had passed a rough bearing and the signal to chase to his subordinates astern, and could do no more till he could get touch again. He had no intention of easing his speed to wait for clearer visibility. He knew too much of flotilla war to let a chance of fighting go by in that way. If he once got to the enemy, the rest of his flotilla would steer to the sound of the guns; and anyhow, he decided, if he did have to fight single-handed, the worse the visibility was and the greater the confusion and doubt among the enemy, the better would be the chances for him. The snow ahead cleared for a minute to leave a long narrow lane between the showers, and he saw the loom of the last ship of the enemy's line. The German destroyer seemed to fall back to him, as if she was stopped, though in reality she was holding station on her next ahead at a fair sixteen knots. With a startling crash and a blaze of blinding light the guns opened from along the leader's side—the German guns waiting, surprised, for a full minute before they replied. When they did open fire, the duel had become too one-sided to be called a fight at all. Between the crashes of the guns, the clatter and ring of ejected cartridge-cases could be heard but faintly, yet as the big leader passed her battered opponent at barely half a cable distance, through the din and savage intensity of a yard-arm fight the quartermaster stooped over his tiny wheel, oblivious to all things but the clear quiet voice that conned the ship past and on to her next victim. The rear destroyer of the enemy swung away, stopped, and remained—a horrible illustration of the maxim of naval warfare, which says that he who is unready should never leave harbour.

At the head of the German line a man of decision had acted swiftly. As the blaze of the gun-fire broke out astern of him, and before the first German gun had fired a round, he had swung the leading division four points off its course. As the British destroyer tore on up the line, he swung inwards again and closed on her to engage on her disengaged side. As a piece of tactics it was pretty and well performed, but nothing can be judged to perfection in war, and this evolution was no exception to the rule. As he closed in on the British leader, she started her broadside on her second quarry,—an opponent better prepared than her first,—and the snow-laden air quivered to the shock of furiously worked guns. The flashes lit the contending ships in rippling, blinding light, and across the foaming waters that the fighters left in their passage, the drifting snow showed up like flying gold. At short range the leading German division broke in with a burst of rapid fire, and in his swift glance towards this menace from his disengaged side the British leader saw the flaw in his enemy's harness. The last of the German division was too far astern for safety in view of the fact that the British ship was at the moment fighting-mad. The German leader had a glimpse of a high bow swinging round towards him in the midst of salvoes of bursting shell—then came an increased burst of firing from down the line astern, followed by a great crash and a dull booming explosion. The gun-fire died down and stopped as the guns' crews lost sight of their target, until the scattered flotilla was running on in the same darkness as had preceded the fight, though in far different condition. The German leader was not sure as to what had happened to the first of his command to be attacked, but he knew well what had come to the rear ship of his own division. She had been blown up in the shock of being rammed by the English madman, and although she had probably taken her slayer with her, she had left an impression on the minds of the rest of the flotilla on the subject of what odds an English ship considered to be equal, that would take some considerable drilling to eradicate. He flashed out a signal to tell his unseen ships to concentrate, and the signal, shaded as it was, drew down a salvo of shell from half a mile away on his quarter. At full speed he tore on for home, realising a fact that he had only suspected before—that the savage who had attacked him had been but the forerunner of a flotilla of unknown numbers and strength. The crackling sound of battle—a battle at a longer range now—passed on and died down as the unheeding snow smothered both light and sound. Both flotillas were occupied, and in their occupation had no time to think of what was left astern of them,—a shattered German destroyer stopped, helpless, and an easy prey for the returning British—a litter of lifebelts, corpses, and wreckage, that marked the grave of the rammed ship—and a barely-floating hulk, her stern and half her deck only above water, that lay rolling to the swell; a broken monument to a man who had fought a good fight and gone to his death with the sound of the trumpets of the Hall of all Brave Men calling in his ears.

The Boy twisted the seaman's silk handkerchief more tightly round his left wrist, and drew another fold across his broken hand. He snapped his orders out furiously, and men hastened to obey them. He knew that his after-gun was the only one above water, and that the sloping island of the stern that formed its support was not likely to retain buoyancy long, but so long as there were survivors clustered aft and dry ammunition with which they might load, he was going to be ready for fighting. To the luck that caused one of his flotilla to lose touch in the chase and blunder across him, he owed the fact that he was ever able to fight again. She came tearing by down wind—threw the narrow beam of a searchlight full on to him—and recognising by that extraordinary nautical "eye for a ship," which can see all when a landsman could see nothing, that the sloping battered wreck was the remnant of a ship of her own class, turned on a wide sweep to investigate. The Boy knew nothing of her nationality, and cared less what her intentions were. In the midst of a litter of ammunition, wounded men, and half-drowned or frozen survivors, he slammed shell at her from his sightless and tilted gun till his store of dry cartridges dwindled and failed him. His shooting was execrable; he could hardly make out the dark blotch that was his target as, astonished and silent, she circled round him. Savage and berserk, he fired till his last round was gone, then drew his motley collection of ratings around him, and with pistol, knife, and spanner they waited for their chance to board.

A long black hull slid cautiously into view and closed them, till up against the beating snow and rising wind a voice roared out through a megaphone a sentence which no German could ever attempt to copy—"You blank, blank, blank," it said, "are you all something mad?"

The Boy stood up, and his wounded hand just then began to hurt him very much. "No sir," he called in reply. "I'm sorry, sir; I made a mistake. We've got a lot of wounded here."

The night seemed to turn suddenly very cold, and he realised that at some moment since the collision he must have been in the water.

The Boy did not see her till he had left the train and was half-way along the station platform. Then she came forward from the ticket-collector's barrier, and he discovered with a start that not only was the sun shining, but that the world was a very good place to be alive in. He dropped his suit-case to shake hands, and then hastily snatched it up to forestall her attempt to carry it for him. She turned and piloted him out of the station to where an ancient "growler" waited, its steed dozing in the sunshine. "I ordered this old thing, as I thought you mightn't be strong enough to walk, but you're not such an invalid as I expected. The carrier is bringing your luggage." The lady spoke, looking him carefully over from under the shade of her hat.

"Walk! Yes, of course I can. I'm not an invalid. I—No, I mean—let's drive." He slung his suit-case hastily in through the open cab door.

The lady seemed to see nothing inconsistent in his incoherencies. She may have possibly followed his train of thought. She merely nodded, and reached in for his suit-case, which she swung easily upwards, to be received by the driver and placed on the roof. She then stepped in, and watched as the Boy cautiously entered and took his station beside her. With what seemed almost a yawn, the old horse roused and began to work up to his travelling pace, a possible five miles to the hour.

"Well, Boy," said the lady, "and what sort of a time did they give you in hospital?"

"Oh—quite decent, you know; but mighty little to eat. I believe they put every one on low diet as soon as they get there just to keep them humble and quiet."

"Well, your mother's just dying to feed you up, so you'll get awfully fat soon. How's the hand?"

The Boy stretched out his left arm and showed a suspiciously inert-looking brown glove. "Only three fingers gone and some bits missing. It's stopped my golf all right, though."

"But you'll still be able to hunt and shoot and you'll work up some sort of a golf handicap again when you're used to it. What was the battle like, Boy?"

"Oh—just the usual sort of destroyer scrap. We saw them first in our packet, and so we got most of it. It was a good scrap, though."

"Will you be able to go to sea again, or will they——?"

The Boy flushed and leaned back. "Of course I will—I've got a hand and a half, and they can't stick me in a shore job when I've got that much." The lady put a hand swiftly out and rested it on the padded brown glove. "Of course they can't. Sorry, Boy. I never thought they would, you know." The Boy instantly brought his right hand across, and, catching the sympathetic hand that lay on his glove, kissed it with decision. He then leaned back again to the musty padding of the cab, rather shocked at his own temerity. The lady, however, showed no signs of confusion at all.

"How long sick leave did they give you? Do you have to go back to the hospital, or do you just report at the Admiralty?"

"I don't know,—look here, when are we going to be engaged?"

"When we're old enough, Boy—if you're good. Are you going to be?"

"That's a bet," said the Boy firmly. "So long as I know it's going to be all right, I'll be awfully good. What are you going to do with me on leave? I can't dig trenches for peas now—at least, not properly."

"No; but if you took a little more interest in the subject, you'd know that at this time of year you can pick them. Now, here's your house, and you're going in to see your mother, and I'm going home; and you're not to laugh at her if she cries, and—pay attention, Boy—there's no need for you to wear that glove on your hand; she isn't a baby any more than I am."

AN URGENT COURTSHIP.

[Written with a lot of assistance from a partner.]

The solitary figure in the R.N. Barracks smoking-room rose, stretched himself, and lounged across to a table to change his evening paper for a later edition.

"Hullo! old sportsman. Where's everybody?"

The "sportsman"—a precise-looking surgeon who wore a wound-stripe on his cuff—looked round from the litter of newspapers he had been turning over.

"Why, lumme! if it ain't James the Giant-Killer. Here, waiter! Hi! Two sherry—quick! What the deuce brings you here, James?"

"Just down from the North,—joining the Great Harry to-morrow. Where's every one? Is there an air-raid on, and were the cellars too full for you, my hack-saw expert?"

"They were not. They're damn near empty, worse luck. But the Depôt Boxing is on to-night, and I'd be there too, only it's my turn for guard. It's no good your going now, you old pug; they'll finish in half an hour, and it's a mile away."

"Oh! Well, I'm tired, anyway. I want dinner and then a bed. Of all filthy games, give me a war-time train journey. I've found a cabin here, and I found a bath, and I won't quarrel with any one for an hour or two."

"Then, you may as well keep the cabin while you've got it, because the Great Harry is having her mountings altered, and won't commission for a week yet."

James Rainer swivelled round in his chair to take the sherry glass from the waiter. "Here's luck, Doc. I thought she commissioned to-morrow, though."

"Gun trials to-day, and the experts didn't like her. Not much wrong, I believe, but she's delayed a week. Here's long life and a——" The surgeon paused and put his glass down. James Rainer stared at him somewhat truculently.

"James, my boy, I was forgetting. Your little flapper's here. Ah! I see you know all about that."

"Doc.—you're an ass; I wasn't thinking of that at all."

The surgeon leaned back in his arm-chair and prepared to enjoy himself.

"Ah! James, me old friend—pot companion of me youth! What a chicken-butcher you are! If only you hadn't been so young; two years ago, was it not? How the years do roll on, to be sure. And what a little romance it was—the blue-eyed flag-lieutenant and the admiral's daughter—always the first two down to breakfast. And we used to hear, too, in the Yard, of the little expeditions when you were detailed to take her back to school and—No! hands off! Would you touch me with a cheild in me arrms? Let me go and I'll tell you all about her—and look out for my drink, you great ruffian."

"Never mind your drink." James released the surgeon's head from under his arm and sat down again. "Is she down here?"

"She is, James—and she's a devilish pretty girl now, too. If it wasn't that we're most of us crocks here we'd——"

A signalman entered and glanced inquiringly round the room.

"Who is it for, signalman? Anybody hurt?"

"No, sir." The man looked at his signal-pad again. "Send despatch officer to Admiralty House instantly."

"Help!" The surgeon turned to Rainer. "There's only one available to-night, and he's at the Boxing. It's probably only stuff to be brought back here. What about——? But I forgot, you're tired, aren't you? They'd better telephone."

Rainer picked up his cap. "I'm not supposed to join till to-morrow night, and I'm going even if it means another filthy railway journey. 'Night, Doc!"

The door banged decisively, and the surgeon chuckled at some deep jest of his own.

Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Woodcote grunted ferociously as a knock sounded at his study door.

"Come in!" he barked. "Who is it?"

He looked up to see a tall clean-shaven lieutenant enter—a broad-shouldered athletic figure with a heavy jaw and twinkling grey eyes.

"Eh—Rainer, how are you, my boy? I was expecting the despatch officer."

"Yes, sir; but as I was at a loose end at the barracks I came myself. I'm joining the——"

"The Great Harry—yes, so you are. Well, it's a long time since I saw you. You must come and dine with us before you sail. Now, you'd better get off with these. I'm going to send you in the car." He pressed a bell and a seaman entered. "The big car at once, and the headlights. Tell Thompson to hurry up."

"Please, sir, Thompson's hurt his wrist, sir. Starting the——"

"Confound Thompson—he's always doing it. Why does he do it? Eh? Eh? You can't tell me? Tell Miss Ruth to get the other car round at once, d'you hear?"

"Now, Rainer," said the Admiral, "here's the despatch. Take it to Shortholme aerodrome, and bring a receipt back, d'you hear? and keep that girl of mine out of mischief. Come in!"

The door opened, and a slim leather-coated figure appeared. Rainer tried to keep his eyes on the Admiral, but failed dismally, his efforts resulting in a distressing squint. His flapper of two years ago was now a calm, self-possessed, and extremely pretty girl, who, in her rôle of amateur chauffeur, did not seem even to be aware of his presence in the room.

"The car is ready, father," she said, and vanished, leaving the startled Rainer gaping at a vision of neat black gaiters beneath her short skirt.

"Well, you'd better get on then," said the Admiral. "But, by the way, tell Forrest—Wing-Commander Forrest—to keep an eye on his machines. There are three German prisoners loose near here—two pilots and a mechanic from their Flying Corps. They may try and steal a machine to get away on. Tell him to lock up his hangars, or whatever he calls the things, and—all right—get on—get on. What are you waiting for?"

Rainer, nothing loath, took his dismissal. He hurried across the hall, cramming the despatch, in its stiff parchment envelope, into the inside pocket of his overcoat as he went. The car was standing purring at the door, a leakage of light from the side-lamps shining on a demure little face behind the screen, and showing him also that the back near-side door was standing invitingly open.

"You little darling," he thought, "as if you didn't know what you are in for." He firmly closed the back door, sat down in the vacant front seat, and reached over to pull in a rug from behind him. As he did so the clutch was gently engaged and the car slid quietly down the drive.

"It's jolly nice your driving me like this, Miss Woodcote," he said. "Do you drive many despatch officers?"

"Why, yes, Mr Rainer; Thompson and I take turns at it."

"Are you an official chauffeur, then?"

"I have been for some time now."

"Always here?"

"No, I was at Portsmouth a bit."

"Indeed? How far is it to Shortcombe?"

"About twenty miles, by this road."

"You didn't seem surprised to see me in your father's study."

The car dodged round a tram and began a louder purr as it felt the open road ahead.

"Well, Hickson told me you had come."

"Oh! he did, did he? Did Hickson tell you anything else?"

"Yes; and I don't think it's quite nice for an officer to bribe a butler to write and tell him things about his master's daughter."

"Well, I'm damned. Hickson is a scoundrel. I told him he wasn't to."

"Well, he did tell. I made him. And I think it was very wrong of you."

"But I'd always looked after you before, and it's only natural I should like to hear you weren't getting into trouble after my eagle eye had left you."

"Never mind about eagle eyes. It was very rude, and it mustn't go on."

"It won't. I promise you."

Miss Woodcote, a little piqued at such easy acquiescence, drove in silence for a few minutes, then, unable to restrain her curiosity, fell into the trap.

"Well, I'm glad to hear you say so. It was a silly thing to do."

"Yes, it was, perhaps. But the necessity for it has gone now, so I don't mind."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I'm going to marry you now you're grown up, so——"

"Will you please stop talking nonsense?"

"Will you marry me?"

"No."

"Well, that's one proposal over. I think a girl can't be very distant with a man who's proposed to her, can she? It implies a certain intimacy, so to speak...?"

"No."

"It means, you see, a secret shared together, and that should...."

A stony silence.

"Of course—it's not the only secret we've had together. There was the matter of the fire in the kitchen, when we were making toffee and upset the paraffin...."

Still silence.