long
while after p'raps, you run through a regular rain of bits of burnt
paper coming down on the decks--like showers of volcanic ash, you
know." The door of the operating-room seemed just about to open, but
it shut again.

"And the Huns' gunnery?"

"That was various. Sometimes they began quite well, and went to pieces
after they'd been strafed a little; but sometimes they picked up
again. There was one Hun-boat that got no end of a hammering, and it
seemed to do her gunnery good. She improved tremendously till we sank
her. I expect we'd knocked out some scientific Hun in the controls,
and he'd been succeeded by a man who knew how."

It used to be "Fritz" last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it
is Hun or, as I have heard, "Yahun," being a superlative of Yahoo. In
the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenchmen too many names for any one
of them to endure; but this is the age of standardisation.

"And what about our Lower Deck?" I continued.

"They? Oh, they carried on as usual. It takes a lot to impress the
Lower Deck when they're busy." And he mentioned several little things
that confirmed this. They had a great deal to do, and they did it
serenely because they had been trained to carry on under all
conditions without panicking. What they did in the way of running
repairs was even more wonderful, if that be possible, than their
normal routine.

The Lower Deck nowadays is full of strange fish with unlooked-for
accomplishments, as in the recorded case of two simple seamen of a
destroyer who, when need was sorest, came to the front as trained
experts in first-aid.

"And now--what about the actual Hun losses at Jutland?" I ventured.

"You've seen the list, haven't you?"

"Yes, but it occurred to me--that they might have been a shade
under-estimated, and I thought perhaps--"

A perfectly plain asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of the
already locked door. It was none of his business to dispute the drive.
If there were any discrepancies between estimate and results, one
might be sure that the enemy knew about them, which was the chief
thing that mattered.

It was, said he, Joss that the light was so bad at the hour of the
last round-up when our main fleet had come down from the north and
shovelled the Hun round on his tracks. _Per contra_, had it been any
other kind of weather, the odds were the Hun would not have ventured
so far. As it was, the Hun's fleet had come out and gone back again,
none the