268

XIII ROUNDING UP FRITZ 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

British Battleships on Patrol _Frontispiece_

PAGE

German Shells Striking the Water at the Battle of Jutland 12

A Broadside at Night at the Battle of Jutland 12

"Kamerading" with Uplifted Paws 90

Helping the Cook to Peel Potatoes 90

Where the Great Liner Plowed Along 128

We Had Collided with the "Brick Wall" 128

Now She Was Back at Base 128

A Limit to the Number of "Cans" a Destroyer Can Carry 152

A Depth Charge 188

Disabled Destroyer in Tow 188

The Lookout on a Destroyer, and Part of His View 242

She Came Bowling Along Under Sail 284

SEA HOUNDS

CHAPTER I

THE MEN WHO CHANGED SHIPS

Between the lighter-load of burning beeves that came bumping down along
their line at noon, a salvo of bombs slapped across them at one o'clock
from a raiding Bulgar air squadron, a violent Levantine squall which all
but broke them loose from their moorings at sundown, and a signal to
raise steam for full speed with all dispatch at midnight, it had been a
rather exciting twelve hours for the destroyers of the First Division of
the ----th Flotilla, and now, when at dawn the expected order to proceed
to sea was received, it began to look as though there might be still
further excitement in pickle down beyond the horizontal blur where the
receding wall of the paling purple night-mist was uncovering the Gulf's
hard, flat floor of polished indigo.

"It's probably the same old thing," said the captain of the _Spark_,
repressing a yawn after he had given the quartermaster his course to
enter the labyrinthine passage where puffing trawlers were towing back
the gates of the buoyed barrages, "a U-boat or two making a bluff at
attacking a convoy. They've been sinking a good deal more than we can
afford to lose; last week they got an oiler and another ship with the
whole summer's supply of mosquito-netting aboard--but that was off the
south