names all painted hover; an' them as does show their names is only
damn numbers!"

In pairs, colloguing as we go, we mount the jetty steps and find a way
to the conference-room. We make a varied gathering. Some few are in
their company's service uniform, but most of us, misliking an array but
grudgingly tolerated in naval company, wear longshore clothes and, in
our style, affect soft felt hats and rainproof overcoats. Not very
gallant raiment, it is true, but since brave tall hats and plain brass
buttons and fancy waistcoats and Wellingtons went out with the lowering
of the last single topsail, we have had no convention in our attire. In
conference we come by better looks--bareheaded, and in stout blue serge,
we sit a-row facing the blackboard on which our 'drills' are chalked.
Many find a need for eyeglasses, the better to read the small typescript
(uniformly bad) handed round to us, that sets forth our stations and
the order of our sailing, and one wonders if the new look-out has
brought us at last to the hands of the opticians; certainly, our eyes
are 'giving' under the strain.

Of all the novel routine that war has brought to seafaring, convoy work
is, perhaps, the most apart from our normal practice. We have now to
think of concerted action, outboard the limits of our own bulwark; we
have become subject to restriction in our sailing; we conform to
movements whose purpose may not, perhaps, be plainly apparent. Trained
and accustomed to single and undisputed command, it was not easy to
alter the habits of a lifetime at sea. We were autocrats in our small
sea-world, bound only by our owner's instruction to proceed with
prudence and dispatch. We had no super-captain on the sea to rule our
lines and set our courses and define our speeds. We made 'eight bells!'

But the 'bells' we made and the courses we steered and the rate we sped
could not bring all of us safely to port. They gave us guns--and we used
them passing well--but guns could not, at that date, deflect torpedoes,
and ships went down. Then came convoy and its success, and we had to
pocket our declarations of independence, and steer in fleets and
company; and gladly enough, too, we availed ourselves of a union in
strength, though it took time to custom us to a new order at sea.

At first we were resentful of what, ill-judging, we deemed interference.
Were we not master mariners, skilled seamen, able to trim and handle our
ships in any state or case? And if,