monotony a bit if you had a yarn with two or three of them. They'll be
bored stiff standing by in this blazing sun with small prospects of
anything turning up, and probably easier to draw out than at most times.
Gains, there by the foremost gun, would be a good one for a starter.
There is no doubt of his having seen some minutes of the real thing in
the _Killarney_. Only don't try a frontal attack on him. Just saunter
along and start talking about anything else on earth than Jutland and
the _Killarney_, and then lead him round by degrees."

* * * * *

We were just passing the riven wreck of a large freighter as I sidled
inconsequently along to the forecastle, and the strange way in which the
stern appeared to be stirring to the barely perceptible swell gave ample
excuse for turning to the crew of the foremost gun for a possible
explanation. It was Leading Seaman Gains, as incisive of speech as he
was quick of movement, who replied, and I recognized him at once as a
youth of force and personality, one of the type to whom the broadened
opportunities for quick promotion offered the Lower Deck through the
war has given a new outlook on life.

"She was a tramp with a cargo of American mules for the Serbs, sir," he
said, "and she was submarined two or three miles off shore. The mouldie
cracked her up amidships, but her back didn't break till she grounded on
that sand spit there. At first her stern sank till her poop was awash at
high tide--there's only a few feet rise and fall here, as you probably
know, sir--but when the bodies of the mules that had been drowned 'tween
decks began to swell they blocked up all the holes and finally generated
so much gas that the increased buoyancy lifted the keel of the stern
half clear of the bottom and left it free to move with the seas. I have
heard they intend to blow out her bottom and sink her proper for fear
that end of her might float off in a storm and turn derelict."

That story was, as I learned later, substantially true, but it had just
enough of the fantastic in it to tempt the twinkling eyed "Number Two"
to a bit of embroidery on his own account. He was the one with the
muscular forearms and the slight limp. The suggestion of "New World"
accent in his speech was traceable, he subsequently told me, to the many
years he had spent on the Esquimault station in British Columbia.

"They do say, sir," he said solemnly, rubbing hard at an imaginary pa