ruinous, forlorn, in the mud; and, with all reverence to the memory of the Great Admiral, it was borne on me that the meanest of these poor derelicts might well have known more of the terrors and horrors and sheer awfulness of sea war than had any one of his mighty Wooden Walls.

So in the train, on that December noon-only a few days ago came back to me a throng of things seen, heard, and felt in those years of wonder and woe; small things mostly, scarce worth recording then, or now, except in so far as they may serve as pages, so to speak, pointing to the portals of great matters. For since that railway journey I have been reading certain volumes in 'The History of the Great War, based on Official Documents,' namely, The Merchant Navy' and 'Seaborne Trade,' wherein at last old questions are answered, old mysteries laid bare, old rumours discredited, and countless amazing, moving records of human courage and endurance, moral and physical, and of human labour, brain and body, given to the world; and only because my small memories are also of humanity, I am venturing to set some of them down here, at the gates.

A night in December 1914. The train for the North has halted at Dalmeny. An official enters the compartment-as it chances, I am alone-glances at the racks, peeps under the seats, and takes my solitary piece of hand luggage, remarking, as one very weary of explaining, that I shall have it back later. In these times we civilians are not easily insulted; readily we bow to official rule. Besides, the present precaution is not absurd, even in my own case. When rumour jostles rumour and no one knows anything for certain, nothing that is unusual seems absurd. It is but right and proper that any man with a suit-case should be suspected of intent to bomb the Forth Bridge.

From the dimmed lights of the station the train slips into outer darkness. Only the change in the note of the wheels tells when we leave the land, only the loom of the girders that we are surely on the bridge. I open the windows and a dank sea vapour is puffed through the compartment. The rising wind is charged with a bitterness that may mean snow. There are no

lights, no sounds save those of the train. Down yonder, deep in the mirk, are ships of war-battleships, cruisers, destroyers-waiting. Can they do aught but wait in such blackness? And-are they safe, quite safe? The question has sprung from a muddle of rumours. An enemy submarine had lately attempted to bomb and break the bridge. An enemy submarine had run aground at Dalmeny, Lord Rosebery's estate. An enemy submarine had landed two officers who had taken train to Edinburgh, attended a theatre there, and returned to their U-boat undetected. Are such things true? Can they be true? Yet why should one doubt? And do not the enemy submarines lay mines as well as fire torpedoes? Mines! Havoc!

It is but four weeks since I sat in the smoke-room of a country inn with two friends just arrived from Australia, viâ Canada and New York. We were alone in the room, but they spoke in secret whispers, glancing over their shoulders at the door. Perhaps they were the first to bring the news to Scotland. They told how, when off the coast of Ireland, their ship had stood by the sinking Audacious,' a new battleship of the line. She had struck a mine. . . . The chill of dismay that fell on me with their words and lingered through that evening, which should have been a cheerful one, comes upon me once more on the Forth Bridge. To think that one mine could do that! True, worse things have already happened, and worse may come and be reported in the morning paper; but while one stares at the printed words that a man has written in an office, the spoken words of the eye-witness strike home. And my friends did more than speak; furtively they showed that which, I doubt not, was furtively gotten-a tiny photograph. . . .

Through the dark the train runs on. I am aware of a shiver. It is not from the chill sea vapour; not from the flash of fancy in which the bridge is rent in a spout of fire. The bridge, just then, seems to matter very little. But the unseen ships, deep down in the mirk— are they safe? . . . An hour or so later, we are on the Tay Bridge, with snow flurrying at the panes and the wind beginning to cry. But the water is visible and there are no great ships. Now I think of the bridge and

how easy it would be, with a few pounds of explosive, to wreck a pair of the piers...

At Dundee two seafaring men get into the compartment. They are going, I gather presently, to join a mine-sweeper in the North. The younger man wants to talk he is bubbling with legends of the war on the North Sea, simmering with speculations concerning his new job thereon. The middle-aged man sucks stolidly at a cold pipe and occasionally emits a grunt of discouragement. Look here!' says the younger at last; 'do you call me a fool or a liar?' The other's weary grunt may mean anything. 'Look here!' says the young man again; 's'pose ye tell me-and this gentleman here-what the well knows about it.' Resignedly the elder removes his pipe, gives each of us a pitying glance, and in slow syllables that fall like lumps of clay replies: 'Nobody knows nothin' 'bout anythin' in this war.' Deliberately he arises, lets down the window, spits copiously and contemptuously at the weather, raises the window, resumes his seat and his pipe, and composes himself for slumber. It strikes me that his saying is not far from being a true one.

you

We come late into Aberdeen, and in a blizzard; but this is before the days of restrictions in creature comforts, before we have been taught how much one ship matters to the nation, before we have learned what it means to dwell on an island; and the luxuries of the hotel are given and taken as a matter of course. By morning the snow has changed to sleet, and stinging cold is the wind on the near empty quays; the one cheering thing offered there being a grand story which is going the rounds, concerning the ramming of a U-boat by the mine-sweeping trawler, 'Dorothy Gray,' the first feat of the kind. But is it true?* The newspapers have said nothing. Still, everybody keeps passing it on, the more conscientious sort in whispers, and in strict confidence.

Alongside one of the quays lies an old-type destroyer.

I heard the story so often, then and later, told in so many different ways, that I could never feel quite satisfied until I read The Merchant Navy,' wherein Mr Hurd gives a full yet breathless account not only of the ramming incident, but of U-18's voyage from Heligoland with the supreme object of attacking the Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow, of her balking there, her making for the Moray Firth, her encounter with the trawler, and her wounded struggles and ultimate fate (vol. I, p. 352).

She has been in action, but only with the North Sea in the course of her patrol. Among other things, a ventilator is crushed, her starboard rail is bent and twisted and her squat funnels are pallid with salt. A group of her crew are furbishing up a torpedo, a wondrous bright and shining thing for so sombre a purpose, preparatory to replacing it in its tube. The few people on the quay are more interested, however, in a trawler which comes yawing in from the turmoil outside. She is from up Iceland way and has a welcome cargo of fish. But fish is not everything. Has the skipper seen anything of the Germans? No, he hasn't; and he isn't fashing about the Germans, decent chaps-most o' them, any waywho wouldn't bother a peaceful chap like himself except, maybe, for a bit o' fish. Oh, ay; he reads the papers, at least once a fortnight, and he's heard plenty o' the tales that have bein' goin' the rounds. But what's a chap to believe? Let them that was mad enough to start it, fight it out; as for him, he'll attend to his trawlin'. It is still the attitude, the question, of many. What's a chap to believe? But the War has only begun. Attend to his trawlin'? We shall see!

In the morning the old town of Peterhead is very grey and bleak and, after Aberdeen, still and vacant. In its streets the wind strikes wildly and bites savagely. Beyond the breakwater the North Sea has gone crazy. Over all hangs a heavy sky, sullen, indifferent. In the night, out yonder, a small sailing ship came to grief. The lifeboat was out for hours, coming back at dawn with her human salvage. Somewhere in the cold-faced, warm-hearted town are strangers sleeping off exhaustion and the fear of death; doubtless their saviours, whose reward is to be home again, sleep also. For this Peterhead flies no flags.

Down at the harbour there is little doing. Peterhead is a mine-sweeper base-one of the first to be established -but the mine-sweepers are absent, the second flotilla, I am told, having gone out to relieve the first. Think of them out yonder! A trawler is built for heavy weather, but sweeping mines is not quite the same thing as fetching up fish. . . . To-day one half of the harbour is packed with steam fishing vessels, idle. But before long

they will be wanted, every one of them, and, the necessary gear in haste provided, be given jobs, more or less perilous, to do. Outwardly, at least, there is no hint of War here. None? Stay! What craft is that, with the slim funnel and slender, rakish spars? All the Navy grey in Britain could not disguise her. The sweet curve of her bow would alone betray her. Why, then, the masquerade, and what makes the dainty lady here? In the summer that seems so long ago, all in white she glided and swung over free and kindly waters; fair women and brave men-brave now, one doubts notlived and lounged on her luxury; her days were passed amid beauty; her nights were as soft dreams broken only by light music and lighter laughter. But at this northern port, in midwinter, what does she do? So fragile-looking for all her war make-up, what can she do? Ah, wait! Regard her well! Men are working in her bows. To-morrow you will comprehend-to-morrow when her little grey gun is mounted. For this dainty lady, even as that sturdy wench, the trawler, is one of the Little Protectors.

The scene is the interior of a small public-house near the fish quay in North Shields. There was a touch of frost in the night, but the heavy fog of early morning has thinned, and now a sad, moist mist hangs over the Tyne. A little while ago came the news of the bombardment of the Hartlepools. The man beside me says he heard the guns. He is one of the seven men to whom my friend the trawl-owner† introduced me yesterday. All were lately in from the mine-sweeping, and my friend thought that I might-perhaps-learn something about it. Seven fine fellows they were, and I was honoured by their handshakes-only they sat all the time on the edges of seven chairs, and gazed into seven R.N.R. caps, wherein they kept their cigarettes, and remained inarticulate-all excepting one. The trawl-owner said I was lucky to get one. But I trust I am not suggesting that my companion of the public-house is

* At the end of September 1914 there were fifteen steam yachts in commission, and fifteen fitting out ('The Merchant Navy,' vol. 1, ch. viii).

† One of his trawlers was blown up while sweeping the Tyne Minefield on Aug. 27, 1914 (Hurd, vol. 1, p. 322).