H.M.S. ----

"You know two years ago I was going to marry you if I could, and I knew that you——"

"What did you know?"

"Well, you knew I'd never let you marry any one else."

"Mr Rainer—will you please be quiet? I don't want to speak to you."

"Damn," said Rainer, leaning back sulkily.

"And don't swear, please."

Rainer sat up again. "Haven't I got cause for swearing? We've come ten miles and I wanted to kiss you before we'd done twenty. You're wasting time, you know."

"I don't want to kiss any one, and certainly not you."

Rainer's confidence began to evaporate slightly. This was not quite the flapper he had known. He sighed heavily, and, leaning back again, turned slightly away from her, wishing that he had eyes in the back of his head.

Miss Woodcote, secure in the knowledge that he was not so favoured by nature, had glanced three times in his direction before the trouble started. The car whirled round a corner, its speed regulated more by the state of the driver's temper than by good judgment, and the headlights shone full on a heavy farm cart which lay right across the road. There was a grinding of brakes, a lurch and skid, and Rainer had just time to throw a protecting arm across Ruth as the collision occurred. The screen went to pieces as the headlights went out, and the frightened Rainer and the extremely angry chauffeuse stared at each other in the dim glow of the side-lamps.

"Are you hurt? Are you all right? Ruth...."

"The beasts, the beasts. I've never hit anything before. Oh! Just look at all the glass."

The tone of her voice reassured the trembling lover beside her, and rising to his feet, he began to shed his overcoat.

"Cheer up," he said. "There mayn't be as much damage as you think. We'll have a look at it. Hullo!"

Two dark figures showed by the near side of the bonnet, and a harsh voice rasped out: "Out of the car and put your hands up. Quickly, now, or you'll get hurt."

Rainer obeyed part of the order with startling alacrity. This was a straightforward and simple problem to deal with compared with the attempt to instil sense into an unreasonable, albeit delightful, girl. His overcoat dropped to the floor-boards and he landed on the road at the same moment. Two to one in a bad light was very fair odds, he felt, and he only regretted that he had not got his gloves on, as he foresaw broken knuckles for himself by the morning.

He shuffled forward a few feet and went in for his left-hand adversary. The left feint was only a concession to orthodoxy, but the right hook which followed it was delivered with a grunt and twist that meant business. He sprang back at once behind the side-lamp, perfectly satisfied that the recipient of the blow was going to be a sleeping partner for some minutes at least. The second man came forward a little doubtfully, swearing in excellent German. Rainer heard a cry from Ruth and turned half round. A third opponent had appeared from behind the car, and a club or heavy stick was whirling over his head. For an instant Rainer hesitated, then tried to jump in under the weapon. He felt as he did so that it was too late, but he arrived safely on his man's chest, clutching for the upraised arm. The left hand seized something it had not expected to find—a girl's hand in a leather glove. The club-man roared with rage, swung round and struck savagely behind him. Rainer had a glimpse of a white face going down, and a little moan of pain from the ground sent him berserk. An arm came around his throat from behind, and he knew that what he had to do must be done quickly. He tripped the club-man and hurled himself sideways and back. The three figures, swaying and straining together, struck the car and came down. Rainer felt the arm round his neck slip and change to a hand. The owner of the hand instantly began to regret this, as Rainer's teeth were not only in good condition but had a grip like a bull-dog's. The club-man began to scream, and not without reason. To be held against a car-wheel by a twelve-stone rough-and-tumble expert who doesn't mind being killed if only he leaves his mark on you, is a bad position for any man to be in. Rainer's hands were on his throat, the knuckles working and straining upwards for the carotids, and Rainer's legs were quietly but surely engaged in breaking his left ankle.

Then the man with the prisoned hand began to talk rapidly, and Rainer threw his reserve strength into his hands. He knew what was coming. His first opponent had awakened. He felt the man behind him wriggle his body clear, and then came a smashing concussion. With a feeling of regret that he had not been allowed another ten seconds' grip he sank into oblivion.

Two men rose from beside him and leaned panting and gasping against the car. One of them subsided and sat on the running board, his breath rasping and tearing in his throat. The man who had felt Rainer's punch dropped the club, took off a side-lamp and made a hasty examination of the front of the car. Returning, he spoke in short abrupt sentences to the others, and assisted the seated man to his feet with a kick. The three stood and listened for a moment, then broke through the hedge and vanished into the night.

It seemed to Rainer in his dreams that his ship was coaling. He could hear the crash and rattle and roar of the winches, and there was a gritty taste in his mouth as if he was working in the collier's hold. He spat out a mouthful of dust and lifted his head. No—they weren't coaling. He was lying against a very hard and nobbly car, and he had a devil of a headache. He considered the situation a moment, and then woke up suddenly with a cold feeling of fear. He rose and steadied himself by a wing, then looked round. Yes, there she was, a few feet away, and at the sight of her his strength came back. He knelt down and lifted her shoulders. She moved a little and moaned. With trembling fingers he felt the top of her head and found that the cap was gone, and that there was a suspiciously sticky lump on her forehead. He felt for his handkerchief, but remembered that it was in his overcoat. Lifting the girl in his arms he tottered to the car and sat down in the front seat, while he searched the coat pockets. He found the handkerchief, and noted, as a side-issue, that the despatches were still there. Unscrewing the filling cap of the petrol tank he plunged the handkerchief in, but turned his head at a voice at his elbow.

"Jim! What are you doing?"

"Thank God! Ruth, lie still. I'm going to put some petrol on your head."

"Ooo!" The lady had straightened up in her seat. "My poor head—it does hurt. Jim! if you put petrol on my head I'll never marry you."

"But, darling—I——"

"Don't do it. Have you got the despatches?"

"Yes. I don't think they were after them. Ruth, d'you know that chap would have brained me if you hadn't tackled him?"

"Why did you kiss me just before I woke up?"

"I didn't. I swear I didn't."

"You did. I know you did."

"I—I—Ruth, were you angry?"

"Don't you think you might see if you can move the car, or do something useful?"

"Ruth, were you? Ruth, I say——"

"Jim, there's a car coming. All right, be quick. That will do. There, you old brute—now go and meet that car. Give me your hanky."

Rainer reluctantly dodged round the farm cart, holding a side-lamp in his hand. The headache was forgotten, and the world seemed a remarkably pleasant place in spite of bruises and stiff joints. The car pulled up and a group of figures came towards him. "Hullo," said one, "what's all this?"

Rainer recognised the speaker. "That you Deane?" he replied. "Three escaped Huns have attacked us. They've gone now. I was bringing despatches for the Wing-Commander, but they didn't get them. Miss Woodcote's in the car. She's smashed—the car, I mean—and she's had a blow on the head from a club."

"Lord! Those are our men. They walked out to one of our machines at dusk just after it landed, but they ran when they were challenged. We're after them now."

"Well, they can't get far. One's groggy and one's lame. What about Miss Woodcote? She'll have to be sent home. She's got a nasty crack on the head."

"We'll send her to Admiralty House in this lorry. Give me the despatches and you go back with her. I'm going to spread my men out and hunt the fields. They must have been after your car."

Rainer walked back as the air-mechanics began to move the farm cart out of the road. "Ruth," he said, "we're going back on this lorry. I've handed the despatches over, and I'm going to take you home."

"Only ten miles, Jim, and you expected forty, didn't you?"

"I did, but I hoped to have kissed you all the last twenty of them, you little angel."

"Well, Jim, it looks a very dark lorry, doesn't it? But as for kissing me in the other car——Well, you may have decided on the last twenty miles, but I had arranged for the last hundred yards up the drive. Why? You silly old thing. I can't do two things properly at once, and I made up my mind when we started I was not going to be kissed when I was driving. Carry me across carefully, Jim, dear. I'm feeling rather fragile now...."

LOOKING AFT.

GRIT.

The Captain of H.M. T.B.D. Upavon was in a bad humour. He had decided when he left harbour that this patrol was going to be an uninteresting one, as the area allotted to him covered no traffic lane, and was therefore unlikely to hold an enemy within its boundaries. The dulness of a blank horizon had continued to confirm him in his opinion since the patrol began. He spoke from his arm-chair as the First Lieutenant struggled into his oilskins preparatory to going on deck for the First Watch.

"I don't care what courses you steer so long as you work along to the west'ard and keep the alterations logged. Beat across in twelve-mile tacks, and tell your relief to do the same. I'll be keeping the morning, and I'll turn round and work east at six. Got it?"

The First Lieutenant intimated that he had "got it," and, pulling his sou'wester well down over his ears, passed out: he was none too cheerful at the moment himself. The rain had been beating down in heavy streams since dusk, and the long oily swell that had been with them since leaving harbour had, although it had not wetted their rails, made the steady rolling rather monotonous.

The big tramp steamer might have had a fighting chance if it had not been for the torpedo. It hit fairly abreast her bridge, and two boats at the port-davits broke to splinters above the explosion, while the wireless instruments developed defects that would have taken a week to cure. The Chief Mate never saw the periscope. The explosion, and the sight of a hard white line stretching away to port at right angles to their course, were impressed on his brain simultaneously. It was a few seconds later when he rose shakily to his feet and mechanically set the engine-room telegraphs to "stop." As he did so, the Captain arrived with a rush on the bridge and released him from his post. He hurried below to examine the damage, and to fight, by every means possible to seamanship, the great Atlantic waters that he knew must by then be flooding nearly half the hold-space of the ship. Ships have reached harbour with worse damage than she had received, and she might have added another name to the list of tributes to good seamanship had not the enemy risen astern of them to complete his work. A shell hummed over them, skimming the tilted deck from two thousand yards away. The second shell arrived as the tramp's stern-gun fired, and the steamer quivered to a dull rumbling shock that told of a well-delayed fuse and a raking shot.

The tramp's big propeller threshed along, half out of water, as her Captain rang down for speed with which to dodge and manœuvre; but the vicious shells came steadily home into her, and it was a question only of whether the straining bulkheads forward would go before her stern was blown in. The stern-gun could hardly be depressed enough to get a clear view of its target, and Fritz knew it. The Chief Mate reckoned that it was about the twelfth shell that finished them. Following its explosion, he heard a noise that told him much,—a hissing, rushing sound of air from beneath his feet—the sigh of flooding holds.

There was little time, but they did what they could. The gun's crew, wrestling with a refractory cartridge-box lid, hardly seemed to look up as the tramp sank, carrying them down as so many British seamen have gone down, intent only on the job in hand. In five minutes' time the ocean was clear again save for a half-dozen bobbing heads clustered round a small white upturned boat.

The sea, that from the deck of the tramp had seemed to be only a long gentle swell, now appeared tremendous and threatening. With a cable's length between their smooth crests the big hills came majestically on, giving the numbed survivors glimpses of the empty spaces of the sea at intervals before lowering them back to the broad dark valleys between. For a few minutes the men simply paddled their feet in silence as they clung with unnecessary strength to the life-lines, stem, and stern-posts of the capsized boat; then the Chief Mate called to two of them by name. He gave the white-bearded, semi-conscious figure he supported into their charge and commenced diving, or rather ducking down, under the gunwale. He was blue with cold and weariness before he gained his object—a heavy eighteen-foot ash oar. The other two men came to his assistance, and between them they succeeded in passing the oar-loom across and under the boat, and in working it about until it caught and held at the far side. It took the Chief Mate a ghastly quarter of an hour before he could climb to the swaying keel, but once there he easily hauled the lighter of his assistants up beside him. With the other man steadying the loom in position, they swung their weight back on the painter clove-hitched to the bending blade. Time after time the oar slipped and had to be replaced, and on each failure the cramped workers panted and shivered a while before patiently setting to the task again. As they toiled, the send of the swell worked the boat broadside on, and suddenly as they threw back on the line she came sharply over, throwing them into the sea before they could clutch the rising gunwale with their hands. Followed an hour of heart-breaking baling with caps and hands, and then one by one the six came aboard—the old Captain, who in the face of active work was recovering consciousness, insisting on being at any rate one of the last three to leave the water.

The Chief Mate collapsed at once across the after-thwart. He had been working with the strength of desperation, and the effort had been great. The others knelt or sat on the thwarts, staring around them as they swung periodically on the crests of the waves in hungry desire for the sight of help. One man faced aft and began swearing, cursing the cold, the Germans, the war, and, in a curious twist of recollection, the ship's cook, who had died twenty minutes before, but who had done so suffering under the accusation of having stolen the swearer's sugar ration. The Captain rose, steadying himself by a hand on the gunwale: "Stop that swearing, you," he said; "lay aft here and rummage these lockers. You other hands, muster the gear in the boat and clear away the raffle. Mr Johnson, you and I will bail for an hour; the boat is leaking, and we'll take the first spell. We want warming, I think."

The Chief Mate raised his head from against the thwart—"I can't bale, sir; let the men do it. I'm done."

"Mr Johnson, I'm sixty-five years old and I'm going to bale, and I'm captain of this ship."

The Chief Mate clawed himself up to a kneeling position, and taking a sodden cap from the stern-sheets set feebly to work. As he went on he warmed a little, and the deadly feeling of despair began to leave him. The movements of men about him as they hunted for missing masts and oars roused him at length to an oath at a seaman who lurched against him.

An hour later the dusk closed down, and with two men baling wearily the boat rose and fell to what was undoubtedly a threatening sea, tugging and jerking at her sea anchor. The other four crouched in the stern-sheets, huddled together to find warmth beneath the beating rain.

"If the sail wasn't gone, sir, would you 'ave tried to make land?" A seaman spoke, his cheek against the Chief Mate's serge sleeve.

"I would, Hanson; and if we had two sound oars, I'd use those too," said the old Captain. "But even like this, I'm not going to give in or stop trying."

One of the balers dropped his cap and leaned sideways across the stern-sheets. "Tell 'em the truth, sir," he said. "I know, and both you officers know. If we had sails and oars too and a fair wind, we couldn't make land under a week. We'll not live three days in this cold and on this ration, and there's no traffic here. For Gawd's sake stop shammin', an' let's take our medicine quiet."

The Chief Mate swore and started to rise, but the Captain checked him. "One moment, Mr Johnson," he said, and turned to the ex-baler: "Listen now, my lad; it's not that you're afraid, it's just that you haven't got guts, that's your trouble. I'm an old man and I've got to die soon anyhow, so it oughtn't to matter to me. But I tell you that I'm going to work till I freeze stiff on this job, and I'll never stop trying if every one of you does. It's true, there isn't much chance for us, but there is a chance, and I won't let go of it. If we were told to come this route, it means some one else may be told to use it. There may be a ship just over the horizon now. I tell you, I don't want some one to pick me up drifting about and say, 'They haven't been dead an hour yet; if they'd used a bit more pluck they'd have pulled through. No, by God, the man that sank my ship thinks he's finished me, but as long as I can lift a hand I'll try to beat him. I'll sail ships yet in his dirty German teeth, and I'll take you with me in my fo'c'sle. Now get on and bale till your watch is up."

The man reached forward to the floating cap and without a word continued to use it, ladling the icy water overside in pitifully small quantities. The white-bearded captain subsided again beside the Chief Mate.

The Upavon was still rolling heavily as her Captain came on the bridge for the morning watch. She rolled a little uneasily now, and there was a suspicion of a "top" to the seas as they lifted her. The Captain glowered at the crescent moon—having lost none of his ill-humour in the night,—while the Sub-Lieutenant nervously turned over the watch to him.

"And we're to turn east at six, and the First Lieutenant said to be careful to log all alterations——"

The Captain dismissed him abruptly and turned away. As if he didn't know his own orders! Nice thing to be told them by a young cub like that! He would alter round just when he liked, of course. Damn the rain! He'd alter course now and run down before the wind. If those young beggars thought he was going to spend the next two hours facing the rain, they were very much mistaken. Why, when he'd been their age he'd faced more rain than they were ever likely to meet, so—he spoke an order, and the ship came slowly round through ten points of the compass.

"Steady, now. How's her head? South? All right; put that in the log—time, four-twenty...."

It was six-thirty, and the dawn and two cups of cocoa had removed a good deal of the Captain's temper. He lit a cigarette and faced to windward to look at the coming weather.

"M'm," he soliloquised; "and it's going to breeze up a bit too. There'll be some breaking seas by noon."

As he was turning to continue his pacing of the bridge, he started and fumbled for his binoculars. He stared a while to windward, and then, without lowering the glasses, spoke—

"Starboard fifteen, quartermaster.... Steady, now.... Steer for that white boat on the port bow,—see it?... Messenger! go down and tell the First Lieutenant I want him; and call the surgeon, too."

A MAXIM.

FROM A FAR COUNTRY.

Announced by the jangling of the curtain that he had almost brought down with his heavy suit-case, a cheerful curly-haired officer entered noisily and dropped into one of the Wardroom arm-chairs. He stretched his legs out and, lighting a cigarette, leaned back luxuriously.

"Well?" said a chorus of voices, "well—how's London?"

The curly-haired one smiled reminiscently. "Still standing, still standing," he replied. "No place for you though, I'm afraid. You're none of you good-looking enough to pass as Yanks or Colonials."

"Oh, cut it out. Tell us what it's like. You know, you're the first one to go there from us for a year, and we want to know."

"What? all about it? All right; chuck a cup of tea across and I'll give you the special correspondent's sob-stuff. Aah! that's better; this train-travelling has given me a mouth like—I won't say what. Well, I'll try and tell you what I thought of it and the people that live there. I may say at once that they are civilised to the extent that they'll take English money without complaining about it, and—all right, I'll get on.

"Well, you know how I went off laden with meat and other cards till I was bulging, and how I reckoned to find people looking hungry at me as if they were reckoning what I'd boil down to in a stock-pot? Well, I've got all these cards still—didn't need 'em. I'd usually left them in my other coat when I got started on meals, and as they've got the trick of camouflaging fish and eggs till you don't know what you're eating, it wasn't worth hunting 'em out. All London seems to live on eggs, and where the deuce they all come from I don't know; they must be using up dumps of them. Oh, and another thing, I'd forgotten that in London they don't grow electric lighters on every bulkhead, and it was lucky I had a few matches with me. The first day I was stopped by fellers wanting a light off my cigarette just three times in a dog-watch, but the other days I didn't get asked at all—I'd lost the country-cousin look, I s'pose. Men? Yes, there's a fair sprinkling there still, but nothing under forty, I should say. Yes, there seem to be crowds of women. Perhaps there are actually more, or it may be that the shortage of men makes 'em look more; but there do seem to be heaps of them. It just made me marvel, too, at the extraordinary lack of imagination the women have. They still wear devilish short skirts, and yet there isn't one in forty of 'em that has a foot and ankle that one could call it decent to show. You'd think they'd see one another's defects and get wise, but they don't. I suppose that now the secret's out about their legs, they reckon it's too late to hide the truth and they face it out; but I'm surprised the young ones don't camouflage themselves a bit and get a fair start. Theatres? Yes; I went through the list, revues and all. I read Arnold Bennett's account of a music-hall—you know the book? Yes, I read it in the train going down. Well, I gathered from his description that things had flashed up a bit since the dear dead days of nineteen-sixteen, and that I would find myself in a hall of dazzling Eastern et-ceteras; but, my word! it was like tea at the Vicarage. I don't know what revue Arnold Bennett found, but I guess I missed it. It's true, I saw one perfectly reckless lieutenant drop a programme out of a box into the orchestra; but as the orchestra didn't notice it, and I doubt if the lieutenant did either, it could hardly be put down to riotous conduct induced by drink and sensual music. Oh, I noticed one thing—all the theatre programmes had directions printed as to what to do in case of air-raids during the performance. They had it printed small and sandwiched in between the hats by Suzanne and dresses by Cox announcements. I liked that. It was British and dignified. I'd like to have sent some copies to Hindenburg. News? Yes, I heard a whole lot, but it was mostly denied in the papers next morning. It's a queer town for rumours. I think they all live too close together, and they get hysterical or something—like in that Frenchman's book, you know, the 'Psychology of Crowds,' or something like that. They weren't worrying much about the war, though. I stopped to look at the tape-messages in the club, and there was an eight-line chit on the board mentioning that the Hun was coming on like a gale o' wind towards Paris, while the rest of the board had eight full-length columns on the latest Old Bailey case, and there was another column coming through on the machine with a crowd waiting for more. No, I'm not trying to be cynical. I read 'em all, but I hadn't quite got the London sense of proportion in two days, and it worried me that there was no more war news coming.

"Cost? Yes, rather. I've spent whole heaps of bullion, and I'll have to ask the Pay for an advance now. It's quite easy; you just exist and the cash trickles off you. There's not so much of the old 'men in uniform free' or 'half-price to officers' going now. There aren't many civilians left, and I guess they're just taking in one another's washing. Everything that isn't a necessity is double price at least, and I believe the shopkeepers would like to make breathing a luxury too. On the whole, I'm glad I only had a few days there. The air's so foul, you know. Mixture of scent and petrol, I think. Oh but, by the way, I saw a hansom—a real hansom—in Regent Street. Quite a neat well-kept one, too. No, nothing new in the way of dresses. Just the same as nineteen-sixteen, as far as I could see. There may have been some good-looking faces among the thousands in the West-end streets, but they were cancelled by the awful legs underneath. I wonder they ever manage to get married. Well, I saw thousands of that kind of female—more than one ever saw before; but I met some others who squared things up in my mind. Ten hours a day and clean the car herself for one, and oxyacetyline welding eight hours and overtime for another at two-five a week. Doing it to win the War, and not because they wanted to or liked it. Made me feel small to be on leave when I talked to 'em. And then, as I was leaving the hotel, a whole crowd of Swiss porters and servants, that had been fairly coming the Field-Marshal over me for three days, came oiling round me for tips, and pocketed the cash without a word when they got it; and—and—while they were doing it, a Scotch corporal walked past the taxi with three wound-stripes on his arm and four notches on his bayonet hilt. It's all a bit too puzzling for me. As soon as I got settled in one impression, I'd get jolted out of it by another. Heigho! I'm not sorry to have gone there to look, and I'm not sorry to be back." He rose, and moving across the Wardroom, flung open the door of his tiny cabin and passed in. His voice sounded hollow through the thin partition. "Hi! outside there—some shaving water eck dum," and then a contented murmur—"Lord! but it's good to be home again."

THE CRISIS.

A SEA CHANTY.

THE WAR OF ATTRITION.

A wonderfully deep-blue sea stretched away to meet a light-blue sky, which was dotted with soft wool-like patches of cloud. There was a slight smooth swell from the south-west, and the air was cool and salt-laden. Looking from the conning-tower the hull of the boat could be clearly seen as she rose and fell to the waves, the sunlight flashing back steel-blue from her grey side six feet below the surface. It was a day that showed the sea at its best—a high Northern latitude in June, and a high barometer producing conditions under which it seemed to be a shame to be at war.

There were two men on the submarine's conning-tower. The smaller of the two was her captain, a fair-haired man with a Prussian name which seemed hardly to fit in with his Norse features. The other man hailed from Bavaria—a tall, thin, large-headed individual, with wide-set eyes and a nose and lower lip that hinted of Semitic ancestry. The big U-boat jogged along at half speed, beating up and down in erratic courses—keeping always to a water area of perhaps ten miles square.

The two officers leaned against a rail, their heads and shoulders twisting and turning continuously as they watched the distant horizon. Each carried heavy Zeiss glasses slung round the neck, and from time to time one of them would search carefully the western sea and sky, his doing so invariably infecting his companion into doing the same. The U-boat was running with a little less than half her normal cruising buoyancy—for speed of diving and not surface speed was the important qualification for her for that day. From the open conning-tower lid came the dull hum of the engines; while as the boat rolled, a shaft of sunlight, shining down the tower itself, sent a circle of yellow light swinging slowly from side to side across the deck beneath the eye-piece of the periscope.

"Is it a big convoy this time, sir?" The First Lieutenant spoke without checking his continual twisting and turning as he glanced at every point of the skyline in turn.

"Yes, it is a big convoy. But there is no doubt of their course or their speed. We shall be among them before the sunset."

"You would not then dive now? That is, if you are sure——"

"I do not dive till I am sure. And also we will want all the battery power we have before the dark. Did I not say it was a big convoy?"

"You think there will be a big escort?"

"We will see. I know it will be an escort I do not like to take a chance with."

The Lieutenant fidgeted awhile, his glasses at his eyes. His Captain looked at his profile and at the glint of perspiration on the slightly shaking hands, and yawned. His face, as he swung round again to scan the horizon astern, looked bored and perhaps a little lonely. A submarine is a small ship in which to coop up incompatible natures, and the terrible losses of personnel in the Imperial submarine service had sadly reduced the standard of officers. He felt sometimes as if he were an anachronism, an officer of nineteen-fourteen who had miraculously lasted four years. He felt that it had been only the fact that a misdemeanour had caused him to be driven forth to the big ships for two years that had saved him from sharing the unknown fate of his contemporaries. Well, he reflected, it was only a matter of time before he would join them. The law of averages was stronger than his luck, wonderful though the latter had been. He extracted a cigar from his case and reached out a hand to take his subordinate's proffered matchbox. As he did so he glanced again at his companion's face, and a sudden feeling of understanding, and perhaps a touch of compassion, made him ask—

"Well, Müller? You have something that worries you. What is it, then?"

The First Lieutenant turned and took a careful glance round the circle of empty ocean. Then his speech came with a rush—

"I want to know what you think, sir. You don't seem to worry about it. I know you can do nothing more—that one can only do one's work as best one can and all that—but I still feel restless. How is it going to end? We are winning? Yes—oh yes, we are winning, but we have done that four years, and how far have we got? Before I came into submarines I believed all they told us, but now I know that we are not strangling England at sea, and that we never can now. What are we going to do next? Is it to go on and on until we have no boats left? Gott! I want to do something that will frighten them—something that will make them understand what we are—something that will make them scream for pity." He paused, gulped, and stared again out to the westward. The Captain straightened himself up against the rail and stretched his arms out in another prodigious yawn.

"My good Müller," he said, "you cannot carry the cares of Germany on your back. Leave that to the Chancellor. One can be sufficiently patriotic by doing one's work and not asking questions that others cannot answer. As to the submarine war—well, blame the men who would not let the Emperor have his way, that hindered him when he would have built an equal fleet to the English. I do not mean the Socialists—I mean others as well. I mean men who grudged money for the Navy because they wanted it for the Army. Curse the Army! If we had had a big fleet we would have won the war in a year, but now—ach! Look now, Müller—you have read Lichnowsky's Memoirs? Yes, I know you are not allowed to, but I know you have. Now I say that what he says at the end is true,—that the Anglo-Saxon race is going to rule the West and the sea, that we shall only rule Middle Europe, and we were fools to play for Middle Europe when we might have had the sea. We would now give all the Russias and Rumania and all our gains just for Gibraltar and Bermuda, for if we had those stations all the rest would come to us. We fight now for our honour, but if it were not for that—and that is everything—we would give our enemies good terms."

"But if that is true—if we can gain no more—we have lost the war!"

The Captain shrugged. "We will have won what we do not want, and lost all that we do; but we shall have won, I suppose. It depends on our diplomatists. If we can get but a few coaling-stations we shall have won, for it would all come to us when we were ready again. But you will not gain a victory by a great stroke as you say you wish, Müller. The war is too big now for single strokes, and the English will not scream for mercy now because of frightfulness. They are angry, and they hate us now."

"But you yourself have sunk a liner, and you showed them as she sank that the orders of Germany must be obeyed."

The Captain's face did not alter at all. "I did do so, and I would do so again. My honour is clear, because I obeyed my orders. Would you have dared to question?"

"No—by God! and I would do it gladly." The Lieutenant's face worked, and he scowled as he glanced astern. "I would wish that every ship of every convoy carried women."

The Captain laughed almost genially. "It is easy to see you are not a Prussian," he said. "It does not matter whether you like or dislike a thing. All that counts is whether or not it is to the advantage of the State. So the Roman World-Empire was made. Myself, I doubt if killing women pays us; there is this talk now of the boycott of Germany after the war. They add time to the boycott for every time we fire on ships that are helpless, and the boycott is to be by sailors. I would laugh at such a threat if it was from any others, but sailors are not to be laughed at. They are likely to mean what they say. It is as I said: if we had fought to the West and to the sea, no man would have dared to threaten us with a sea-boycott now."

"But even with our small Navy we have held the English checked. It is not our Navy that is lacking. What is it, then?"

"It is the Navy. It should have been as big as the English Fleet. And the men—Gott! Müller. I tell you, if we had done the Zeebrugge attack ourselves, and I had been there, I would feel that my honour and the Navy's honour was safe, that we could stop and make peace. I would be proud to die on such a service, and I envy the Englishmen we buried when it was over."

"But this is—Herr Capitan, you talk as if you were an Englander——"

The Captain whirled on him, his eyes sparkling dangerously. "Dummkopf!" he said. "Report me if you like. I hate the English and I love my Fatherland, but report me if you like. Ach! You may report me in Hell, too; for I know—I know——"

He stopped suddenly and tilted back his head to listen. The First Lieutenant shrank back from him, his mouth open and his hands feeling for the periscope support. A faint murmur of sound came down wind from the fleecy cloud-banks to the west. The Captain jumped to the opening of the conning-tower and stood, impatient and anxious by the lip, until his lieutenant had slipped and scrambled half-way down the ladder.

Then he jumped down himself, pulling the lid to after him. Simultaneously there came a rush and roar of air from venting tanks, the stem of the boat rose very slightly as her bow-gun went under, and in twenty seconds the submarine was gone, and the bubbles and foam of her passage were fading into the level blue of the empty sea. A minute later she showed a foot of periscope a cable's length away, and a small airship topped the western horizon and came slowly along towards her. The periscope vanished again, and forty feet below the surface the captain watched a gauge needle beside the periscope creep round its dial inch by inch till it quivered and steadied at the forty-metre mark.

"Diving hands only. Fall out the rest. Remain near your stations. Lower the periscope." The First Lieutenant barked out a repetition of each order as the Captain spoke. There was a shuffling of feet, some guttural conversation that spoke of a flicker of curiosity among the men of the crew, and then all was quiet but for the hum of motors and the occasional rattle of gearing as the hydroplane wheels were moved. The Captain moved forward to the wardroom, removing his scarf and heavy pilot-cloth coat as he walked. "Order some food, Müller," he said. "I'm hungry—that airship was farther ahead of them than usual." He threw himself down in a long folding-chair and stretched out his sea-booted legs. "I won't come up to look now until I hear them. Relieve the listeners every half-hour, Müller. I want to have good warning. We should hear a big convoy like this at twenty miles to-day." The curtain rings clashed and a seaman spoke excitedly as he entered. The Captain nodded and reached out to the table for his coffee-cup. "Just the bearing we expected," he said, "but if they sound as faint as he says there's time to get something to eat first."

It was a big new standard ship which drew the unlucky card in the game of "browning shots." The torpedo hit her well forward, its tell-tale track being unperceived in the slight running swell until too late. A big bubble of water rose abreast the break of the forecastle till it reached deck-level, then it broke and flung a column of spray, black smoke, and fragments skyward. As the ship cleared the smoke-haze, she was obviously down by the head and steering wildly. Two auxiliary patrol vessels closed on her at full speed, and the nearest freighter increased speed and cut in ahead of her in readiness either to tow or screen. The torpedoed ship, after yawing vaguely for a few minutes, steadied back to the convoy's course, slowing her engines till she only just retained steerage way. There was a rapid exchange of signals between her and the escort vessels, and then an R.N. Commander on an adjacent bridge gave a sigh of relief. "Good man that," he said. "We'll have him in dry dock to-morrow. It hasn't flurried him a bit, and I like his nerve."

The explosion had caused more than the salvage vessels to leap into activity. The white track of the torpedo showed clearly after it had gone home, and the first to take action was a tramp, across whose bows the track passed. The tramp was a ship of the early 'nineties, and her full speed was at the most nine knots, but her skipper at once jammed her helm hard over to steer along the torpedo-wake with a somewhat optimistic hope of ramming. Two destroyers and an armed auxiliary did the same thing, with the result that the tramp skipper found himself suddenly in the cross-wash of the warships as they passed him at a few yards' distance at twenty knots. Somebody on the bridge of one of them screamed a profane warning at him through a megaphone, and the skipper, after a hurried glance at the quivering destroyers' sterns, jumped to the telegraph and stopped his engines. A couple of seconds later his ship shook to a great detonation, and a mighty column of water rose and broke close ahead of him. He starboarded his helm and swung round after the rest of the convoy, his ship shaking to successive explosions as more escorting vessels arrived at the spot where he had turned.

As his torpedoes left the tubes the U-boat captain barked out an order. The attack had been fairly simple, but his hardest problem was only beginning. The boat's bow dipped sharply in answer to the tilted hydroplanes, and she began her long slide down to the two-hundred-foot mark. She had got to fifty before a sound like a great hammer striking the hull told them of a successful torpedo-run. The Captain looked up from his watch and smiled. A moment later he was watching the gauges with a grave and impassive face. He knew that the fact of his torpedo hitting would mean greater difficulty for him in the next few hours than he would have known had he missed altogether. At a hundred feet the first depth-charge exploded, smashing gauge-glasses, electric lamps, and throwing a couple of men off their feet. The boat rocked and rolled under the shock, while orders were roared through voice-pipes for more emergency lights to be switched on. More charges exploded as the boat slid downwards, but each charge was farther away than the last. The half-light of the hand-lamps round the periscope showed the source of a sound of pouring waters—two rivets had been blown right out of the inner hull close before the conning-tower. The Captain shouted orders, and the submarine levelled off her angle and checked at the fifty-metre line, while two men began frantically to break away the woodwork which stretched overhead and prevented the rivet-holes being plugged. At that depth the water poured in through the holes in solid bars, hitting the deck, bouncing back and spreading everywhere in a heavy spray which drenched circuits and wires.

"Müller! where the devil are you? Start the pumps—I can't help it if they hear us. Start the pumps, fool!"

"But you will come up? You will——"

"Schweinhund! Gehorsamkeit! Go!"

The pumps began to stamp and clatter as they drove the entering water out again, but above the noise of the pumps the Captain could hear the roaring note of propellers rushing far overhead. If it had not been for those infernal rivets, he thought, he would have been at three hundred feet by now, but he could not risk the extra wetting which a pressure of a hundred and thirty pounds to the inch on the entering water would give to his circuits. The weight of extra water in the bilges was nothing—he could deal with that—though the thought of the six hundred odd fathoms of water between him and the bottom was a thing to remember anxiously in case of his getting negative buoyancy; but if this continual spray of salt water reached his motor circuits it would be fatal. He cursed the men who were vainly trying to block the rivet-holes with wood wedges, and jumping on the periscope table he tried to guide the end of a short plank—intended as a baffle-plate—across the stream. As he stood working, a terrific concussion shook the U-boat from stem to stern. The bows rose till men began to slip aft down the wet deck, and from aft came a succession of cries and shouted orders, "Close all doors! the after-hatch is falling in—Come up and surrender—Lass uns heraus!" The Captain rose from the deck beneath the eye-piece, shaky from his fall from the table. He hardly dared look at the gauge, but he kept his head and his wits as he gave his orders. With the motors roaring round at their utmost power and an angle up by the bow of some fifteen degrees, the U-boat held her own, and as tank after tank was blown empty, she slowly gained on the depth gauge and began to climb. As she rose, she was shaken again and again by the powerful depth-charges that were being dropped on the broken water left by the air-bubble from her after compartment—a surface-mark now a quarter of a mile astern.

Beneath the conning-tower more and more men were gathering, some calm, some white, trembling, and voluble. The boat broke surface with her stem and half her conning-tower showing, then levelled a little and tore along with the waves foaming round her conning-tower and bridge. From inside they could clearly hear the shells that greeted her, and in a moment there was a rush of men up the ladder. Among the first few the Captain saw his First Lieutenant's legs vanish upwards, and at the sight a sneering smile showed on his sunburnt face. The first man to open the lid died as he did so, for a four-inch shell removed the top of the conning-tower before he was clear of it. The escort was taking no chances as to whether the boat's appearance on the surface was intentional or accidental, and they were making the water for a hundred yards around her fairly boil with bursting shell. As the boat tore ahead, holding herself up on her angle and her speed, a few men struggled out of her one by one past the torn body of the first man to get out. Two of them leaped instantly overboard, but the next clawed his way up to a rail, and while others scrambled and fought their way overside, and shells crashed and burst below and around him on water and conning-tower casing, he stood upright a moment with arms raised high above his head. At the signal the firing ceased as if a switch had been turned by a single hand, and he subsided in a huddled heap on the bridge as the riddled submarine ran under. Down below the Captain still smiled, leaning with his elbows on the periscope training-handles and watching the hurrying men at the ladder's foot, until the great rush of water and men, that showed that the end had come, swept him aft and away across the border-line of sleep.

THROUGH AN ADMIRALTY
WINDOW.

The room was exactly the same as any room in any Government building, except that the Naval observer would have at once noticed one fact—that the furniture was of the unchanging Admiralty pattern. The roll-top desk, the chairs, and even the lamp-shades, would have been to him familiar friends. They were certainly familiar to the Post-Captain who sat at the desk. Captain Henry Ranson had been a noted Commander before his retirement—a man of whom many tales, both true and apocryphal, still circulated when Senior Officers of the Fleet forgathered at the lunch intervals of Courts-Martial and Inquiries. He had little opportunity in his present War appointment to display any of the characteristics on which his Sagas had been based, for neither seamanship, daring, or, well—Independent Initiative, were quite in keeping with the routine of an Admiralty Office.

To-day he was feeling the claustrophobia of London more acutely than usual. The sun was shining through the big window across the room, and he wanted to rise and look out at the blue sky and white cloud-tufts that he knew to be showing over the buildings across the Horse Guards Parade. His desk gave him no view through the window—he knew the weakness of his powers of concentration on his eternal paper work too well to have allowed himself such a distraction; but as the door opened to admit his clerk—a firm and earnest civilian with the zeal of monastic officialdom shining through his spectacles—he rose abruptly and moved out into the sunlight glare.

"Yes, Collins? What is it?"

"A small matter, sir, which is not quite in order. If you will glance through this you will no doubt agree with me."

The Captain took the sheets from the clerk's outstretched hand and moved a little away from the glaring light to read.