and always keeping up
communication with the ring and its various centres. Their little stone
huts are on the highest point in their particular area, and their homes
usually are only a couple of hundred yards distant. Their chiefs are
coast-guards of the old days called back to their former service in the
Royal Navy. These men rule the volunteers with a rod of iron. No matter
what section of the coast one may pick, the coast-watcher is ready with
his glasses or telescope. Suspicious acts of any individuals receive
speedy attention, and each batch of the guards vies with the next for
keen performance of duty.

There is a halo of interest around these men, tame as their work may
appear to them at times. Take the watchers on the Scilly Isles, for
instance. They are as good as any around Great Britain. It is second
nature for them to watch the sea. It is a desire with them, something
they would not miss. Their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers
were watch-dogs on that area of the ocean. Go to St. Mary's, and you
will see a coast-watcher, up soon after dawn, take a stroll along the
beach, even when he is not supposed to be on duty and before he has
tasted his morning tea. The family telescope is at his eye, as he wants
to get a good look at what the sea has been doing, and what is there. To
the uninitiated, it seems to have the same paucity of interest as any
other shipless stretch of water; but to this expert it has a story. He
notes the clouds, the sun, the very rocks; and they say that his gaze is
so sharp that it would spot a champagne-cork floating some distance
away. But be that as it may, there is no enemy periscope that is going
to pass unobserved at a certain distance by this hawk-eyed, wind-seared
man.

He goes to his cottage for breakfast, and talks about the sea, then
leaves the table, and has another good look; and it is sadly
disappointing to any of these men to have missed a passing ship. Prior
to the declaration of hostilities, a wreck was the greatest piece of
news to the community; but now it is the glimpse of fast English
warships, and the anticipation of sighting a German U-boat, and thus
being the cause of the craft's doom.

"Gun-firing heard at ten minutes past twelve o'clock to-day," said one
man, reading from a slip he had just made out on the subject.

The man to whom he spoke happened to have been out of hearing distance,
and he could not believe it until a second man came along with