his body ripped and rent. There was much blood.
The sailors stood listening to the man with the helmet, who made
explanations and pointed to the round bullet hole in the floor and the
smash in the panel of the passage upon which the still vicious missile
had spent the residue of its energy. All the faces were grave and
earnest: they were the faces of sober, blond, blue-eyed men accustomed
to obedience and an orderly life, to whom this waste, wet, painful thing
that had been a comrade came almost as strangely as it did to Bert.

A peal of wild laughter sounded down the passage in the direction of the
little gallery and something spoke--almost shouted--in German, in tones
of exultation.

Other voices at a lower, more respectful pitch replied.

"Der Prinz," said a voice, and all the men became stiffer and less
natural. Down the passage appeared a group of figures, Lieutenant Kurt
walking in front carrying a packet of papers.

He stopped point blank when he saw the thing in the recess, and his
ruddy face went white.

"So!" said he in surprise.

The Prince was following him, talking over his shoulder to Von
Winterfeld and the Kapitan.

"Eh?" he said to Kurt, stopping in mid-sentence, and followed the
gesture of Kurt's hand. He glared at the crumpled object in the recess
and seemed to think for a moment.

He made a slight, careless gesture towards the boy's body and turned to
the Kapitan.

"Dispose of that," he said in German, and passed on, finishing his
sentence to Von Winterfeld in the same cheerful tone in which it had
begun.

6

The deep impression of helplessly drowning men that Bert had brought
from the actual fight in the Atlantic mixed itself up inextricably with
that of the lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing aside the dead
body of the Vaterland sailor. Hitherto he had rather liked the idea of
war as being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair, something like a
Bank Holiday rag on a large scale, and on the whole agreeable and
exhilarating. Now he knew it a little better.

The next day there was added to his growing disillusionment a third
ugly impression, trivial indeed to describe, a mere necessary everyday
incident of a state of war, but very distressing to his urbanised
imagination. One writes "urbanised" to express the distinctive
gentleness of the period. It was quite peculiar to the crowded townsmen
of that time, and different altogether from the normal experience of any
preceding age,