* *

It is interesting to note that it was on this mine-field a few days
later that one of the largest transatlantic liners was sunk.

CHAPTER XXI

THE S.O.S.

A GREAT work of rescue was carried on throughout the war on all the
seven seas by vessels of both the old and the new navy. This service was
rendered to ally, neutral and enemy alike, but no complete record of the
gallant deeds performed nor even of the numbers and nationalities of
those saved will, in all probability, ever be available, and none is
needed, for it was a duty which brought its own reward.

Typical of the way succour was brought by the naval patrols to those
unhappy victims of both sexes left adrift in open boats in calm and
rough, sunshine and snow, all over the northern seas by the cowardly
_Unterseeboten_ of the kultured race was the rescue of the passengers
and crew of a liner off the wild west coast of Ireland in the winter of
1916.

* * * * *

It was mid-December, and flurries of snow were being driven before a
stinging north-westerly wind. The sea was moderate, but the heavy
Atlantic swell caused the lonely patrol ship to sink sluggishly into the
watery hollows, with only her aerials showing above the surrounding
slopes of grey-green sea, and a minute or so later to be poised giddily
on the bosoms of acre-wide rollers with nothing but the white mists
obscuring the broad horizon.

It was a wild wintry scene, pregnant with cold and hardship. The officer
who had just come up from the warmth of the wardroom to relieve his
"opposite number" on the bridge pulled the thick wool muffler closer
round his neck and dug mittened hands deep into the pockets of his
duffel coat.

In the Marconi cabin, situated on the deck of the _sloop_, a young
operator was sitting with the receiving instrument fixed to his head and
the clean and bright apparatus all around. He was city born and bred,
and felt keenly the monotony of life at sea, although to him came the
many interesting wireless signals from the vast network of patrols which
covered the Western Ocean--linking the sea-divided units into a more or
less homogeneous fleet.

Presently a message began to spell itself in Morse. Taking a pencil, the
operator scribbled various hieroglyphics on the naval signal paper lying
on the desk in front of him; then after a pause of a few seconds he
pulled forward a tiny lever and began a rhythmic tap on an ebo