"Properly at ease…. Class, 'Shun! Left turn! Dismiss!"

The dozen or so of flannel-dad Midshipmen composing the class sprang stiffly to attention, turned forward, and made off briskly in the direction of the hatchway. The India-rubber Man thrust his hands into the pockets of his flannel trousers and strolled across the quarterdeck to where the Officer of the Watch was standing.

"Tweedledum," he said, elevating his nose and sniffing the keen morning air, "I can smell bacon frying somewhere. So could my class: I could see their mouths watering. You might send for the cook and tell him not to do it."

"You're a dirty bully, Bunje, you know," said the Officer of the Watch reprovingly. "Fancy dragging those unhappy children out of their innocent hammocks at this unearthly hour of the morning to flap their legs and arms about and do 'Knees up!' and 'Double-arm-bend-and-stretch!'" He raised a gloved hand and rubbed his blue nose. Ashore a powdering of snow lay on the distant hills; in the East the sky was flushing with bars of orange and gold athwart the tumbled clouds. An armed drifter, coming in from the open sea, stood out against the light in strong relief. "Here's Mouldy Jakes coming back from Night Patrol—I bet even he isn't as cold as I am."

"Rot!" retorted the Physical Trainer. "Do you good, Tweedledum, to hop round a bit on a lovely morning like this!"

"Hop round!" echoed the other. "Hop round!" He looked about him as if searching for a weapon. The dew, which everywhere had frozen during the night, was slowly thawing on the canvas covers of guns and searchlights, dripping from shrouds and yards and aerials.

"Lord alive!" continued the Watchkeeper. "Haven't I been hopping round this perishing quarterdeck since four a.m. keeping the Morning Watch? If Tweedledee doesn't come and relieve me soon I shall die of frostbite and boredom." The India-rubber Man was moving towards the hatchway. "And if you're going along to the bathroom, for pity's sake see there's some hot water left that I can sit and thaw in."

In the meanwhile the Midshipmen had descended to the cabin-flat where their chests occupied most of the available deck space. Flushed and breathless with exercise, the majority proceeded to divest themselves of their flannels and, girt with towels, made off for the bathroom. One, however, flung himself panting on to his chest, and sprawled partly across his own and partly on his neighbour's.

"I swear this is a bit thick!" he gasped. "I'm not used to this sort of frightfulness." He waved his legs in the air. "I shall get heart disease. Anguis pec—pec—— What's it called?"

"Peccavi," prompted his neighbour, slipping out of his clothes and donning a great-coat in lieu of a dressing-gown. "Otherwise 'The ruddy 'eart-burn.' Just move your greasy head off my till. I want to get at my razor."

"That's the worst of these 'new brooms'"—the victim of heart trouble surveyed his legs anxiously—"I know I've lost a couple of stone since this physical training fiend joined. I don't suppose my people will know me when I go home."

"Well, you aren't likely to be going home for some time to come," said another, a seraphic-faced nudity contemplating his biceps in the small looking-glass that adorned the inside of his chest, "so I shouldn't worry. I say, I'm sweating up a deuce of an arm on me. Shouldn't wonder if I pulled off the Grand Fleet Light-weights next month," he added modestly, "if this sort of thing goes on. I just mention it in case any of you are thinking of putting your names in." He turned from the glass, laughing. "Hullo, Mally, going to have a shave, old thing?"

"Yes, if I can get at my razor—— Oh, Bosh, get off my chest—sprawling all over my gear!"

"I'm in a state of acute physical exhaustion. I feel tender and giddy. I know all this foul exercise is bad for me early in the morning." The speaker sat up and juggled dexterously with a cake of soap, a sponge and a tooth-brush. "I'm getting rather good at this—— My word, look at Mally's shaving outfit. One would think he was a sort of Esau—'stead of only having to shave once a blooming week!"

"Are you going to shave, Mally?" queried a voice across the flat. "Because I'm not sure I shouldn't be better for a bit of a scrape myself. Can I have a rub at your razor after you?"

"You can have it after me if you swear not to skylark with it," replied the owner. "Only, last time I lent it to you, you shaved your beastly leg——"

"Only for practice," admitted the petitioner, advancing with a finger and thumb caressing his chin.

"Well it blunted it, anyhow. Come on, I'm going to the bathroom now."

The Gunroom bathroom was situated in another flat, reached via the aft-deck. Here about this hour an intermittent stream of figures in quaint nÉgligÉ passed and repassed to their toilets. Inside the bathroom itself song and the splashing of water drowned all other sounds. The owner of the enlarged biceps was seated, fakir-wise, cross-legged in one of the shallow, circular baths in a corner, bailing water over himself from an empty cigarette tin.

"Harcourt, old thing," said the shaving enthusiast, who had filled a bath and dragged it alongside his friend, "did you mean what you said just now about the boxing show—are you going to put your name down for the Light-weights?"

The fakir stopped crooning a little song to himself and nodded. "Yes, I'm rather keen on it as a matter of fact. Standish saw me scrapping with Green the other night and sent for me afterwards and told me to get fit. I'm going to have a shot at it, I think. Wouldn't you?"

His friend tested the temperature of the water in his bath with his toe, and got in. "Yes, rather," he replied, and hesitated. "I'm going in for it too," he added.

Harcourt rose and reached for his towel. "Are you, Billy?" For a moment his eyes travelled over the other's slim form. "What a rag! We may draw each other—anyhow we shall have to scrap if we get into the semi-finals. Billy, I believe you'd bash me!" He towelled himself vigorously.

The other shook his head. "You beat me at Dartmouth. But I'm going to have a jolly good shot at it, cully!" He looked up with his face covered with soap-suds and they laughed into each others' eyes.

* * * * *

Breakfast in the Gunroom was, to employ a transatlantic colloquialism, some breakfast.

There was porridge to start with and then a bloater, followed by hashed mutton and cold ham ("for them as likes it," the Messman would say—which meant he pressed it on nobody) and marmalade: perhaps an apple or two to wind up with to the everlasting honour of the Vegetable Products Committee who supplied them gratis to the Fleet. Then pipes and cigarettes appeared from lockers, and the temporarily-closed flood-gates of conversation reopened. The Wireless Press Message was discussed and two experts in military strategy proceeded to demonstrate with the aid of two cruet-stands, a tea-spoon, and the Worcester Sauce, the precise condition of affairs on the Western Front. "Mark you," said one generously, "I'm not criticising either Haig or Joffre. But it seems to me that we should have pushed here"—and upset the Worcester Sauce.

This mishap to the Loos salient was in process of being righted when the door opened and a short, square-shouldered figure, with a wind-reddened face and eyes of a dark, dangerous blue, entered the mess. He came in stamping his feet and blowing on his hands, calling loudly for breakfast the while. "My, there's a good fug in here," he observed appreciatively, and proceeded to divest himself of a duffle coat, and a pair of night glasses which were slung round his neck in a leather case. He stumped across to the table, dragging his legs in heavy leather sea-boots rather wearily.

"Am I hungry?" he demanded, insinuating himself with some difficulty between the long form and the table, and sitting down. "Oh, no! Nothing to speak of. Cold? Not a bit: only frozen stiff. Any sleep last night? Rather! Nearly ten minutes. Porridge, please, and pass the brown sugar." The remainder of his messmates appeared disposed to return to strategical discussion. "Did we have any fun last night?" continued the speaker, raising his voice slightly. "Well, nothing to speak of. Only downed a Fritz."

"Downed one?" roared the Mess, galvanised suddenly into rapt interest in the new-comer and all his works.

"Yep. We were Outer Night Patrol last night. Me and Mouldy Jakes. He does make me smile, that official." A plateful of porridge proceeded to pass rapidly to its last resting place.

"He might have taken me," said one of the others wistfully. "You don't belong to his Division or his turret or anything."

"It was my turn. You went last time. But you missed something, I can tell you!"

"What d'you mean," said the Sub over the top of his paper. "Just cough up the details and let your beastly breakfast wait."

The Night Patroller extracted the backbone from a bloater with swift dexterity. "Well," he continued, "it was very dark last night and foggy in patches: rum night. Very little wind and no sea. We were right outside and the Engineer sent up to say he thought there was something foul of the propeller. So we stopped and investigated with a boathook. There was a lot of weed and stuff fouling us. We were playing about with it mit boathook for nearly a quarter-of-an-hour, and suddenly old Mouldy Jakes put up his head and sniffed about a bit and muttered 'Baccy.'"

"He's got a nose like a hawk," said the Midshipman of that officer's
Division with a tinge of pride in his voice.

The Mess perforce had to possess its soul in patience while the raconteur swiftly disposed of the bloater.

"So I sniffed too, and I could smell it quite plain. We were lying stern to the wind; 'sides it wasn't decent baccy like ours, but sort of Scorp stuff, so we knew it wasn't one of our fellows smoking. Hashed mutton, please; and another cup of coffee. It was pitch dark and for a moment we couldn't see a thing. Then, suddenly, right on top of us came a submarine! She was on the surface and there was a fellow on the conning tower and a couple of figures aft. She must have been smelling about on the surface having a smoke and recharging her batteries."

The remainder of the Gunroom had crowded round the speaker, some kneeling on the form with their elbows among the dÉbris of breakfast, others sat on the edge of the table hugging their knees.

"My word, Matt," said one, his eyes dancing, "I bet you got cold feet."

"Cold feet!" snorted the hero of the moment. "There wasn't time for cold feet. It was too sudden. They just grazed past us, going very slow, and there was a devil of a bobbery. I fancy they thought they were properly in the consommÉ. A trap or something. Anyhow the two braves aft lost their heads and jumped overboard, and the bird in the conning tower disappeared like a Jack-in-the-box—properly rattled."

"What price old Mouldy?" asked the listeners. "Utterly unmoved, I suppose! Lord, I'd love to have seen him!"

"Oh, bored stiff by the whole performance, of course. Still he did make one wild leap for the gun and got off a round at point-blank range. Hit her just below the conning tower. She must have been in diving trim, because she went down like a stone, bubbling like an empty soda-water bottle."

"What about the Huns in the water?" demanded the enthralled Clerk.

"We could only find one. The other must have got mixed up with the submarine's propeller. The one we picked up was nearly done and awfully surprised because we gave him dry clothes and hot drinks and a smoke, and didn't spit in his eye or anything of that sort. Said their officers always told them we illtreated our prisoners. Aren't they Nature's little Nobs?"

There was a little silence, each one busy with his own thoughts.
Finally one broke the silence, voicing the opinion of the rest:

"Well," he ejaculated, "some people have all the blinking luck. I've done about twenty night patrols since I've been up here and never seen anything 'cept a porpoise."

The Night Patroller lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke with the air of a man who had earned it. "You were at Suvla Bay and the landing from the River Clyde," he retorted. "You can't have every ruddy thing in life."

* * * * *

A fine day in Ultima Thule—they were rare—was an occasion for thankfulness and rejoicing. Directly after luncheon the members of Gunroom and Wardroom made their way on deck to bask in the sun and smoke contemplative post-prandial pipes in the lee of the after superstructure. Forward, in amidships, the band was playing a slow waltz and fifty or so couples from among the ship's company were solemnly revolving to the music with expressions of melancholy enjoyment peculiar to such exercise.

"It's make-and-mend this afternoon," said the Senior Midshipman, tilting his cap over his eyes and lazily watching the antics of a gull volplaning against the light wind. He sat on the deck with his back against the superstructure and his hands clasped round his knees.

"It's a topping day, too," added Malison from his vantage astride the coir-hawser reel. "Too good to waste onboard. The footer ground's bagged—let's have a picnic in one of the cutters. Have tea ashore, an' fry bangers over a fire."

The project found favour generally. "We might ask one or two of the
Wardroom," suggested Harcourt. "Some of the cheery ones; Standish and
Thorogood and the Doc, say."

"And old Jakes," supplemented the Midshipman of that officer's Division jealously. "I'd like to ask him. He loves picnics."

Mouldy Jakes was included in the invitation list by general consent. His half-humorous, resigned air of chronic boredom had a peculiar attraction for all the Midshipmen; in the case of the Midshipman of his turret it amounted to idolatry.

"Go an' ask 'em, Harcourt," said the Senior Midshipman. "You're the Blue-eyed Boy with the Wardroom. I'll go and tackle the Commander for the cutter."

"Then Bosh and I will go and ginger-up the Messman," said another, "and get a basket packed. What shall we have for tea?"

"Sloe-gin," promptly responded a tall, pale Midshipman with a slightly freckled nose and sandy hair. "Sloe-gin and bangers.[1] And get strawberry jam: see the Messman doesn't try and palm off any of his beastly gooseberry stuff like he did last time. What about bacon and eggs, and some tins of cocoa and milk, and a cake and some sardines——"

"Wonk," interrupted the caterer, "we're only going to have tea ashore.
We aren't going to camp out for the week-end."

"I tell you what," said Mouldy Jake's patron, "I'll bring my line and we'll catch pollack and fry them for tea too."

"Well, I'm going to shift," said Malison, and the Committee of Supply broke up and passed down below.

Half an hour later the cutter, manned and provisioned, with the skiff in tow, hoisted her foresail and sheered off from the after gangway. The India-rubber Man, as Senior Officer of the expedition, took the helm and banished the Young Doctor into the bows, where, to judge by the ecstatic shouts of merriment that floated aft, his peculiar form of wit was much appreciated. Thorogood, at the main sheet, with an old deerstalker on his head and a pipe in his mouth, led the chorus in the sternsheets. Mouldy Jakes had usurped the skiff, and having satisfied himself that he was required to take no further part in the navigation of the expedition, made himself comfortable in the bottom of the boat and blinked at the sky through puffs of smoke from his pipe.

He was followed into this voluntary exile by the Midshipman of his Division, one Morton, who sat in the bows contemplating him affectionately.

Precisely what it was that inspired this apparently one-sided attachment was never very apparent. The almost passionate loyalty and affections of youth are hardy plants, thriving abundantly on the scantiest soil.

For a while only the drowsy swish of the water past the bottom of the boat, and snatches of merriment or song drifting aft from the cutter, broke the silence in the skiff. Then Mouldy Jakes's companion apparently tired of this silent communion.

"Sir," he said, "would you like to fish?"

"No," said Mouldy Jakes.

His host proceeded to unwind his line. "Do you mind if I do?" he enquired.

"No," was the reply.

The Midshipman watched his line in silence for a little while. "Do you think you sank that submarine last night?" he asked presently.

Mouldy Jakes closed his eyes and gave a grunt with an affirmative intonation.

"It must have been a topping show. Weren't you awfully bucked, sir?"

Another grunt.

"I suppose you didn't get a wink of sleep all night?"

A vague confirmatory noise.

"You must be jolly tired, sir. Wouldn't you like to sleep a bit now, sir?"

"Yes."

"Right ho, sir. You can carry on and have a jolly good caulk. I'm going to fish, and I'll call you when we get to the island where we're going to land…. Is your head quite comfortable?"

Silence reigned in the skiff.

The cutter had passed beyond the outskirts of the Fleet, and the decorum required of the occupants of a Service boat in such surroundings no longer ruled their behaviour. They sang and shouted for sheer joy of bellowing, full-lunged, across the untrammelled water. No one whose life is not spent in the narrow confines of a man-of-war, walking paths sternly ruled by Naval Discipline, can realise the intoxicating effect of such an emancipation. The mysterious workings of the Midshipman-mind found full play on these occasions, as they tumbled about in the bottom of the boat in the unfettered enjoyment of a whole-hearted "scrap." If you have ever seen young foxes at play, buffeting each other, yelping with simulated anguish, nuzzling endearments half savage and half in play, you have an idea of the bottom of a cutter full of Midshipmen proceeding on a picnic. It was an embodiment of youth triumphant, shouting with laughter at the Jest of Life.

"Where shall we go?" asked Standish, smiling, during a lull when the crew sat panting and flushed with exertion, grinning at each other over the tops of the thwarts.

"Any blooming where," shouted Thorogood. "As long as it is out of sight of the Fleet. I feel I've seen enough of the Silent Navy for an hour or two." Then raising his voice he chanted:

"Put me upon an island where the girls are few…"

"Right," retorted the Indian-rubber Man. "We'll go round this little headland. Ready about! Check the fore sheet! Come aft out of the bows, Pills, you clown, unless you want us to miss stays."

"I don't want to go to an island," cried the Surgeon plaintively, "where the girls are few." He surveyed the heather-crowned islets surrounding them on all sides, the lonely haunts of cormorants and black-backed gulls. "I'm all for houris and sirens and whatnots——"

The foresail swung across and knocked him into the bottom of the boat.

"You frail Ulysses!" exclaimed Thorogood, as they set sail on the new course. "You aren't to be trusted in these populous parts. We must lash you to the mast!"

"And stop his ears with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition.

A party set off into the bows to put the proposal into immediate execution, but the imminence of land and a shout from the helmsman arrested them in their purpose:

"Down foresail. Top up mainsail!" The cutter, with the skiff towing peacefully astern, glided into a little bay where miniature cliffs, some twenty feet in height, rose from a narrow shale-strewn beach. The anchor plashed overboard.

"Here we are, here we are, here we are again!" carolled the Surgeon lustily. "Come alongside, skiff! The landing of the Lancashire Fusiliers is about to commence under a withering fire!"

A letter received that morning from a soldier brother who had taken part in that epic of human gallantry had apparently inspired the Young Doctor. He pointed ahead with a dramatic gesture at the cliffs. "Yonder are the Turks! See, they fly, they fly!" A pair of agitated cormorants, sunning themselves on the rocks, flew seaward with outstretched necks. "Lead on, brave lads, and I will follow!"

The skiff came bumping alongside, and Mouldy Jakes, galvanised into wakefulness by the confusion and laughter, found himself inextricably entangled in the fishing-line, holding a kettle that someone had thrust upon him in one hand and a frying-pan in the other. Half a dozen partly clad forms, followed by the Doctor, flung themselves headlong into the skiff and made for the shore. The bows grated on the shingle and they sprang out.

"For drill purposes only," explained the Surgeon breathlessly, "we are
Turks!"

Under his direction they proceeded to collect pebbles. "A withering volley will accordingly be opened on the Lancashire Fusiliers."

Despite a heavy fire of pebbles, the landing was ultimately effected; the invaders abandoned their trousers and floundered gallantly through the bullet-torn shallows. Ensued a complete rout of the Turks, who were pursued inland across the heather with triumphant shouts and the corpse of a seagull, found on the beach, hurled after them from the point of a piece of driftwood.

The evicted snipers eventually returned with their caps full of plovers' eggs, to find a fire of bleached twigs blazing and sausages frizzling in the frying-pan. They were handed mugs of hot tea.

In the phraseology of chroniclers of Sunday-school treats, "ample justice was done to the varied repast." Then it was discovered that the tide was falling, and a hasty re-embarkation followed.

Sails were hoisted, the anchor weighed, and the cutter, with the empty skiff in tow, headed for the West, where the sun was already setting in a great glory of gold.

The brief warmth of a Northern spring day had passed, and, as they rounded the promontory and the Fleet hove in sight once more, duffle coats and mufflers were donned and a bottle of sloe-gin uncorked.

"Mug-up!" cried the Sub. "Mug-up, and let's get 'appy and chatty." They crowded together in the stern-sheets for warmth, and presently Thorogood started "John Brown's Body Lies A-mouldering in the Grave," without which no properly conducted picnic can come to a fitting conclusion. The purple shadows deepened in the far-off valleys ashore, and anon stole out across the water, enfolding the anchored Fleet into the bosom of another night of a thousand vigils.

It was dusk when they reached the outlying Cruisers, and nearly dark when the first ship in the Battle Fleet hailed them. Then hail answered hail as one Battleship after another rose towering above them into the darkling sky, and one by one passed into silence astern.

Silence also had fallen on the singers. Seen thus from an open boat under the lowering wings of night, there was something awe-inspiring—even to these who lived onboard them—in the stupendous fighting outlines limned against the last of the light. Complete darkness reigned on board, but once a dog barked, and the strains of an accordion drifted across the water as reminders that each of these menacing mysteries was the habitation of their fellow-men. A tiny pin-point of light winked from a yard-arm near by to another pin-point in the Cruiser line: Somebody was answering an invitation to dinner at 7.45 p.m., with many thanks; then, reminder of sterner things, a searchlight leaped out spluttering over their heads, and swept to and fro across the sky like the paint-brush of a giant.

A half-drowsy Midshipman in the bows of the cutter watched the message of hospitality blinking through space; he consulted the luminous dial on his wrist. "H'm," he observed to his companion, "I thought it was getting on for dinner-time. Funny how quickly one gets hungry again."

A hail challenged them from the darkness, and a towering outline loomed familiarly ahead.

"Aye, aye!" shouted the voice of the India-rubber Man from the stern, adding in lower tones, "Boathook up forward. Fore halliards in hand…."

"Home again!" said another voice in the darkness. "And so the long day wears on…"

* * * * *

Dinner in the Gunroom was over. One by one the occupants became engrossed in their wonted evening occupations and amusements.

"Mordaunt," said the sandy-haired Midshipman, rising and opening the gramophone, "would you like to hear George Robey?"

The officer addressed, who was sitting at the table apparently in the throes of literary composition, raised his head. "No," he replied, "I wouldn't; I'm writing a letter. 'Sides I've heard that record at least seven hundred and eighty-one times already."

"Can't help it," retorted the musical enthusiast, winding the handle of the instrument. "I think he's perfectly priceless!" He set the needle, stepped back a pace and stood beaming appreciatively into the vociferous trumpet while the song blared forth.

"Reminds me," said Harcourt, laying down a novel and rising from the corner of the settee where he had curled himself, "I must write to my young sister for her birthday. Lend me a bit of your notepaper, Billy."

His friend complied with the request without raising his eyes. "How d'you spell 'afford'?" he enquired.

"Two f's," replied Harcourt. "'Least I think so. Can I have a dip at your ink?"

"I thought it was two, but it doesn't look right, somehow." The two pens scratched in unison.

Matthews, the Midshipman of the previous Night Patrol, had stretched himself on an adjacent settee and fallen asleep immediately after dinner.

Lettigne, otherwise known as "Bosh," amused himself by juggling with a banana, two oranges and a walnut, relics of his dessert. His performance was being lazily watched by the Sub from the depths of the arm-chair which he had drawn as near to the glowing stove as the heat would allow. It presently attracted the notice of two other Midshipmen who had finished a game of picquet and were casting about them for a fresh distraction. This conversion of edible objects into juggling paraphernalia presently moved one to protest.

"Why don't you eat that banana, Bosh, instead of chucking it about?" he enquired.

"'Cause I can't," said the exponent of legerdemain.

"Why not?" queried the other.

"Too full already," was the graceful response. "I'm just waiting—waiting till the clouds roll by, so to speak."

The two interlocutors eyed each other speculatively.

"Did you have any dessert?" asked one.

"No," was the sorrowful reply. "My extra-bill's up."

Thereupon they rose together and fell straightway upon the juggler. An equal division of the spoil was made while they sat upon his prostrate form, and eaten to the accompaniment of searching prods into their victim's anatomy.

"Bosh, you ought to be jolly grateful to us, really. You'd probably have appendicitis if we let you eat all this—phew! Mally, just feel here…. Isn't he a hog! …"

"Just like a blooming drum," replied the other, prodding judicially.

Over their heads the tireless voice of the gramophone trumpeted forth its song. The Sub who had kept the Middle Watch the night before, slept the sleep of the tired just. The door opened and a Junior Midshipman entered hot-foot. "Letters," he shouted. "Any letters to be censored? The mail's closing tomorrow morning."

"Yes," replied the two correspondents at the table, simultaneously bringing their letters to a close.

"Hurry up, then," said the messenger. "The Padre's waiting to censor them. He sent me along to see if there were any more."

Mordaunt folded his letter and placed it in an envelope. "Got a stamp,
Harcourt? I've run out." He extended a penny.

Harcourt looked up, pen in mouth, thumping his wet sheet with the blotting paper. "In my locker—I'll get you one in a second."

"Oh, do buck up," wailed the messenger. "I want to turn in, an' the
Padre's waiting."

"All right," retorted Harcourt. He rose to his feet. "I forgot: little boys lose their roses if they don't get to bed early. Billy, shove that letter in an envelope for me, to save time, while I get the stamp." His friend complied with the request and picked up his pen to address his own epistle. As he did so the prostrate juggler, with a sudden, spasmodic recrudescence of energy, flung his two assailants off him and struggled to a sitting position. They were on him again like wolves, but as they bore him prostrate to the deck he clutched wildly at a corner of the table-cloth.

The next moment the conflict was inextricably involved with the table-cloth, letters, note-paper, envelopes and ink descending upon the combatants in a cascade.

"You clumsy owls," roared Harcourt, returning from his locker. "Now, where's my letter…." He searched among the dÉbris.

"I say, do buck up," wailed the sleepy voice on the threshold.

"Buck up?" echoed Harcourt. "Buck up! How the devil can I buck up—ah, here we are." He picked up an envelope, glanced carelessly under the still open flap and sat down to address it. "Got yours, Billy? Here's the stamp."

"Yes," replied the other, grovelling in the darkness under the table.
"This is it." He reappeared with a letter in his hand.

"The Padre——" again began the impatient envoy.

"All right—all right!" Mordaunt hurriedly affixed the stamp and addressed the envelope without looking at the contents. "Here you are," he said, holding it out. The messenger departed hastily.

The bang of the door awoke the Sub.

"Now, then," he said. "Enough of this. Switch off that cursed gramophone. Get up off the deck. Mop that ink up and square off the table-cloth. Knock off scrapping, you three hooligans."

The hooligans obeyed reluctantly, and sat panting and dishevelled on the settee. By degrees the Mess resumed its tranquillity.

Harcourt stretched his slim form and yawned sleepily. "I'm going to turn in now. And to-morrow know all men that I start training."

"That's right," said Lettigne, still panting and adjusting his disordered garments. "Nothing like being really fit—ready to go anywhere an' do anything—that's my motto." He rang the bell and ordered a bottle of ginger beer.

[1] Tinned sausages. A delicacy peculiar to Gunrooms of the Fleet.