re friendly nor more hostile. On fine
days the sun strikes sparks upon the blue; here and there a peaceful
smudge of smoke hangs in the distance, and it is impossible to believe
that the familiar clear horizon traces the limit of one great circular
ambush.

"Yes, it is impossible to believe, till some day you see a ship not your
own ship (that isn't so impressive), but some ship in company, blow up
all of a sudden and plop under almost before you know what has happened
to her. Then you begin to believe. Henceforth you go out for the work
to see--what you can see, and you keep on at it with the conviction that
some day you will die from something you have not seen. One envies the
soldiers at the end of the day, wiping the sweat and blood from
their faces, counting the dead fallen to their hands, looking at the
devastated fields, the torn earth that seems to suffer and bleed
with them. One does, really. The final brutality of it--the taste of
primitive passion--the ferocious frankness of the blow struck with one's
hand--the direct call and the straight response. Well, the sea gave you
nothing of that, and seemed to pretend that there was nothing the matter
with the world."

She interrupted, stirring a little.

"Oh, yes. Sincerity--frankness--passion--three words of your gospel.
Don't I know them!"

"Think! Isn't it ours--believed in common?" he asked, anxiously,
yet without expecting an answer, and went on at once: "Such were the
feelings of the commanding officer. When the night came trailing over
the sea, hiding what looked like the hypocrisy of an old friend, it was
a relief. The night blinds you frankly--and there are circumstances when
the sunlight may grow as odious to one as falsehood itself. Night is all
right.

"At night the commanding officer could let his thoughts get away--I
won't tell you where. Somewhere where there was no choice but between
truth and death. But thick weather, though it blinded one, brought
no such relief. Mist is deceitful, the dead luminosity of the fog is
irritating. It seems that you _ought_ to see.

"One gloomy, nasty day the ship was steaming along her beat in sight
of a rocky, dangerous coast that stood out intensely black like an
India-ink drawing on gray paper. Presently the second in command spoke
to his chief. He thought he saw something on the water, to seaward.
Small wreckage, perhaps.

"'But there shouldn't be any wreckage here, sir,' he remarked.

"'No,' said the co