plainly up to the destroyers to
stick it to the limit, and that is just what they did. As I heard one of
the men put it, it was the "bruisiest" bit of escort-work they had ever
been--or probably ever will be--called upon to face, but every one of
those Yankee destroyers stayed with it to the finish.

Now it would be the _Zop_ that would emerge from under a mountainous sea
and come drifting back without steerage weigh, rolling drunkenly in the
trough, and now it would be the _Zap_. And now this or that result of a
"hydraulic ramming" would disable one of the others temporarily. But,
game to the last flake of brine-frosted camouflage, back they came to it
again, and again, and yet again. Sunrise of the next day found them
plugging on in station, and in station they remained until the
_Lymptania_, beyond the zone of all possible submarine danger, made a
general signal of "Thank you," and headed off to the westward on her
own.

* * * * *

Out of the dim grey dawn of the morning after the night before, battered
and buckled, but still unbroken, the wearily waggling line of the
_Lymptania's_ late escort trailed back into harbour. The mussed-up
silhouette of every one of them bore mute testimony to the way she had
been put "through the mill," and, in most cases, the things that met the
eye were not the worst. The _Zop_ needed every yard of the channel as
she zig-zagged up it under a jury steering-gear, and the _Zap_, like a
man dazed from a blow, would have sudden "mental hiati" in which she
would straggle carelessly out of line with an inconsequential
going-to-pick-flowers-by-the-roadside sort of air. The _Zim's_
idiosyncrasies had more of an epileptic suddenness about them, and her
hectic coughing plainly indicated some kind of "lung trouble." Our
little _Zip_ presented a very brave front to the outer world, but I
heard hollow clankings punctuating the erstwhile even hum of the
engines, while the drip, drip, drip and the drop, drop, drop through the
crinkled sheet-steel sheathing of my cabin told that the deck-plates of
the forecastle fitted a good deal less snugly than before they had
played anvil to the lusty head-sea hammer.

But the _Flossie_, the "latest, the swiftest, the flotilla's pride"--the
wounds of all the rest of us put together were as nothing to those of
the _Flossie_. In trying to maintain her pride of place at the head of
the escort, she _had_, for a brief space, unleashed