* * * * *

The Thermos flask slid with a clatter on to the steel deck of the top,
and the Indiarubber Man opened his eyes. He yawned and stretched
himself and rose stiffly to his feet.

The first rays of the sun were rising out of the sea. "Hai-yah!" He
yawned. "Another bloomin' day. . . . I was dreaming . . . about . . .
blowed if I can remember what I was dreaming about." He adjusted the
focus of his glasses and stared out across the North Sea. "I wonder if
they're coming out to-day."

It was the two hundred and seventy-third morning we had wondered that.

[1] The River Dart.

VII

THE DAY

Although it all happened in that dim, remote period of time "Before the
War," Torps and the First Lieutenant, the Indiarubber Man (who was the
Lieutenant for Physical Training Duties), the Junior Watchkeeper, and
others who participated, long afterwards referred to it as "The Day."

Since then they have seen their own gunfire sink an enemy's ship as a
well-flung brick disposes of an empty tin on the surface of a pond.
The after twelve-inch guns, astride whose muzzles David and Freckles
once soared to the giddy stars, have hurled instantaneous and awful
death across leagues of the North Sea. The X-ray apparatus, by the
agency of which Cornelius James desired to see right through his own
"tummy," has enabled the Fleet Surgeon to pick fragments of steel out
of tortured bodies, as a conjurer takes things out of a hat. The
after-cabin, that had witnessed so many informal tea-and-muffin
parties, has been an ether-reeking hospital.

Yet these memories grew blurred in time, as mercifully such memories
do. It was another and more fragrant one that sweetened the grim
winter vigil in the North, when every smudge of smoke on the horizon
might have been the herald of Armageddon. They were yet to see men die
by scores in the shambles of a wrecked battery, by hundreds on the
shell-torn decks of a ship that sank, fighting gallantly to the last.
And the recollection of what I am about to relate doubtless supplied
sufficient answer to the question that at such times assails the minds
of men.

Two who helped in that unforgettable good-night scene on the aft-deck
were destined to add their names to the Roll of Britain's Honour. It
is not too much to hope that the echo of children's merriment guided
their footsteps through that dark Valley of the Shadow to the peaks of
Eternal Laughter which lie b