pted to murder; and the tramp affirms she heard
him rumbling beneath her, like an inverted thunder-storm, for fifteen
minutes.

"All those tramps ought to be disarmed, and _we_ ought to have all
their guns," said a voice out of a corner.

"What? Still worrying over your 'mug'?" some one replied.

"He _was_ a mug!" went on the man of one idea. "If I'd had a couple of
twelves even, I could have strafed him proper. I don't know whether I
shall mutiny, or desert, or write to the First Sea Lord about it."

"Strafe all Admiralty constructors to begin with. _I_ could build a
better boat with a 4-inch lathe and a sardine-tin than ----," the
speaker named her by letter and number.

"That's pure jealousy," her commander explained to the company. "Ever
since I installed--ahem!--my patent electric washbasin he's been
intriguin' to get her. Why? We know he doesn't wash. He'd only use
the basin to keep beer in."

UNDERWATER WORKS

However often one meets it, as in this war one meets it at every turn,
one never gets used to the Holy Spirit of Man at his job. The "common
sweeper," growling over his mug of tea that there was "nothing in
sweepin'," and these idly chaffing men, new shaved and attired, from
the gates of Death which had let them through for the fiftieth time,
were all of the same fabric--incomprehensible, I should imagine, to
the enemy. And the stuff held good throughout all the world--from the
Dardanelles to the Baltic, where only a little while ago another batch
of submarines had slipped in and begun to be busy. I had spent some of
the afternoon in looking through reports of submarine work in the Sea
of Marmora. They read like the diary of energetic weasels in an
overcrowded chicken-run, and the results for each boat were tabulated
something like a cricket score. There were no maiden overs. One came
across jewels of price set in the flat official phraseology. For
example, one man who was describing some steps he was taking to remedy
certain defects, interjected casually: "At this point I had to go
under for a little, as a man in a boat was trying to grab my periscope
with his hand." No reference before or after to the said man or his
fate. Again: "Came across a dhow with a Turkish skipper. He seemed so
miserable that I let him go." And elsewhere in those waters, a
submarine overhauled a steamer full of Turkish passengers, some of
whom, arguing on their allies' lines, promptly leaped overboard. Our
boat fished t