better for air and exercise. We must be thankful for what we
had managed to pick up. But talking of picking up, there was an
instance of almost unparalleled Joss which had stuck in his memory. A
soldier-man, related to one of the officers in one of our ships that
was put down, had got five days' leave from the trenches which he
spent with his relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole
performance. He had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived up
a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam
about till he was fished out and put ashore. By that time, the tale
goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk half-way up his legs and
arms, in which costume he reported himself to the War Office, and
pleaded for one little day's extension of leave to make himself
decent. "Not a bit of it," said the War Office. "If you choose to
spend your leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over,
that's _your_ concern. You will return to duty by to-night's boat."
(This may be a libel on the W.O., but it sounds very like them.) "And
he had to," said the boy, "but I expect he spent the next week at
Headquarters telling fat generals all about the fight."

"And, of course, the Admiralty gave _you_ all lots of leave?"

"Us? Yes, heaps. We had nothing to do except clean down and oil up,
and be ready to go to sea again in a few hours."

That little fact was brought out at the end of almost every
destroyer's report. "Having returned to base at such and such a time,
I took in oil, etc., and reported ready for sea at ---- o'clock." When
you think of the amount of work a ship needs even after peace
manoeuvres, you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an
action. And, as there is nothing like housework for the troubled soul
of a woman, so a general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from
a petty officer who had also passed through deep waters. "If you've
seen your best friend go from alongside you, and your own officer, and
your own boat's crew with him, and things of that kind, a man's best
comfort is small variegated jobs which he is damned for continuous."

THE SILENT NAVY

Presently my friend of the destroyer went back to his stark, desolate
life, where feelings do not count, and the fact of his being cold,
wet, sea-sick, sleepless, or dog-tired had no bearing whatever on his
business, which was to turn out at any hour in any weather and do or
endure, decently, according to r