Mine-sweeping has been written about by persons from Kipling down, so I
will just tell you the story as I then saw it.

The skipper stood on the bridge of his dusky-coloured vessel as she
soused through the waters of the grim North Sea, his keen eyes ever on
the alert fore and aft, and occasionally on the sister ship to his,
coupled along with the "broom." They were "carrying on," as usual. This
skipper was a man just in his thirties. His face was cheery and round,
and body was muscular and thick-set. In spite of the watch he and his
first mate kept on this particular occasion, he found time to give me
his opinion on certain things interesting to the men who go down to the
sea in ships, and also an idea of what it means to be in command of a
mine-sweeper.

"You should have been with us on Sunday," he said, as he lighted his
cigarette between his cupped hands. "It was more interesting than
usual--had something of this damn thrill you talk about ashore and don't
know what it is until you've been at the firing front or in one of these
blessed ocean brooms. That chap across the way found a mine in his kite,
and we had to cut the hawser in double-quick time, and get far enough
away from it before we pegged a bullet in one of the horns."

The skipper explained that none of the mines are exploded less than 200
yards from the vessels. He said that the experience he had just related
would have sufficed for a day, but that an hour later, when he was still
brushing up a part of the North Sea, not far from the coast, he received
a warning from a trawler that a mine exposed at low water was just ahead
of him. Not in his time had he seen a steamer go astern quicker.
Afterwards, they deftly fished around for the mine, snapped its mooring
rope, and brought it to the surface. When the mine was at a safe
distance from all vessels, a couple of men then aimed their rifles at it
until there was a loud explosion which sent sand-coloured water 35 feet
and more into the air.

But the affairs of that Sunday were not yet complete. Twenty minutes
after the mine had been exploded a great rumble was heard way out at
sea, and soon it was ascertained by the captain of the mine-sweeper that
a Scandinavian tramp had met her doom by striking a German mine.

"We went off to see if we could pick up some of the poor chaps,"
observed the skipper. "Among the twenty-one men and boys we rescued were
four who'd been passengers aboard a passenger vessel whic