EPILOGUE

“That is for ever England.”

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Theshadows were lengthening across the smooth lawns and terrace, and the rooks in the elms behind the stable buildings had begun their evening wrangle for roosting-places when the Ford car came rocking and hooting up the avenue.

“Just as well we didn’t go to meet ’em,” murmured Aughtlone on the threshold of the entrance hall, smiling above his half-rolled cigarette. “I don’t see much of the place these days, but I’m expected to hold to speed limits and consider my tenants’ nerves on the King’s highway when Iamhere. Lorton, of course, is an outlaw by instinct”—Lorton was the chauffeur. “He’s been enjoying himself. To-morrow I shall be requested to restock the poultry yards of four villages and subscribe largely to the cottage hospital, after his devastating passage.”

Brakespear, sitting on the top step with his arms about an aged setter, chuckled softly. “You always had a veneration for the law, Tony,” he said, “even in the far-off days when we were cadets and discussed the theory of war——” He raised one finger. “Hark! That’s Jerome. I recognise his dulcet tones.” He stood up shading his eyes. “They’re all there—Mayhew, Longridge, Foster; where’s Jerome? I can hear him.... Oh, there he is! At least, there are his feet sticking up out of the stern-sheets. We’re going to have our dinner-party after all, Tony.”

The car swung round the last curve with a splutter of gravel, and slowed down as itapproached the door. The occupants of the back seats appeared to be engaged with a struggling object in the bottom of the car, but gradually the turmoil subsided, and four flushed, grinning faces appeared over the side. The car stopped and the passengers emerged, disentangling suit-cases, fishing-rods, and golf-clubs from the rugs. The chauffeur sat like a graven image with the expression of a man who has done his best to instruct and entertain an audience without hope of either recompense or acknowledgment on this side of the grave.

“Nous sommes arrivés,” crowed the stout Jerome, still panting from his exertions; together they passed through into the lofty panelled hall in a babble of chaff and laughter. “The stars in their courses fought for us. We are reunited, my children, after—how many years is it? Very clever of you to arrange it.” “Tony,” said another, “that chauffeur of yours flicked your old bus along to some tune. He’s a star-turn.”

Aughtlone nodded resignedly. “He’s supposed to be suffering from shell-shock and a piece of shrapnel in the apex of the heart. You wouldn’t somehow suspect it, would you? Bag anything?”

“Only a hen,” said Foster, surrendering his suit-case to the butler and exploringamid decanters and a siphon on a side table. “D.D.[5]She lost her nerve and tried to nip across the road. Say when, Jerry....”

The stout one accepted the long tumbler. “Thanks.... Heigh-ho! Very nice too.... Yes, that was all the damage.” He contemplated their host over the rim of his glass. “You appear to own half the county, Tony—— don’t grudge us a hen.”

“I grudge you nothing,” replied Aughtlone. He surveyed his guests affectionately. “It’s so jolly good getting you all together like this—at least, all of us that are——”

“Quite ...” said Foster, with a sudden note of seriousness in his tone.

“You look hot,” said Brakespear, changing the conversation, himself immaculate in white flannels, with sleekly brushed head.

“All very fine for you to talk,” said the fat man with the eagle of the Navy-that-Flies on the sleeve of his monkey-jacket. “Only crossed over from Dunkirk this morning by the destroyer. Fell in with these—Thugs at Waterloo, and spent the best part of the journey under the seat.”

“We had to strafe him,” explained Longridge. “Twice in the train and once in the car. He would try and kiss his handto all the loveliest of God’s creatures we saw.”

Their host groaned. “What was she like—the last one, I mean?”

“In a governess cart,” said Mayhew, “with two kids and a pink hat.”

The Flying Man put down his glass. “The pink hat may have been hers,” he said, “but I’m blowed if——”

“No,” said Aughtlone quickly. “No, they’re her nieces. That’s the vicar’s daughter. ‘Mr. Jerome, you’ll get me ’ung,’ as Harker used to say.”

“Not ’tall,” said the graceless one. “She was much too busy looking after the fat pony to noticeus. ’Sides——”

Mayhew glanced at his watch. “What time’s dinner, Tony? Because what I’d like to do is ‘strip right down an’ ’ave a barf. I can’t really talk till I’ve had a tub.”

“Me too,” chimed in Longridge. “Chops and I have come straight down from the Northern Base, travelling all night.”

The host pressed the bell. “Loads of time. Dinner’s not for another three-quarters of an hour. Have a cigarette and tell us about the Great Silent Navy. Remember, I’m only a dug-out East-coast Minesweeper—a humble country squire masquerading as a naval officer—and I wantto hear about things. There wasn’t a Grand Fleet when I retired.”

“How long leave have you got, Tony?” asked Foster.

“A fortnight,” replied Aughtlone, and turned as the butler reappeared. “Hughes, take Mr. Mayhew and Mr. Longridge along presently and sand-and-canvas them. They can share one bathroom, and that’ll leave room for us. A fortnight,” he resumed, and extending his cigarette watched the steady smoke ascending. “Blown up last Tuesday, and thought it was a fair excuse to put in for some leave and fix up this dinner.... Nerves, you know, and all that.” He smiled.

“Of course,” said the fat man. “Very tryin’ work. We dropped six tons of explosives on Zeebrugge Monday night, and lost two machines. I got my leave all right though, thanks to a twitching eyelid.” He surveyed the company with an unmoved countenance. “Nerves are the devil unless you take ’em in time; and I’m getting old....” He chuckled fatly.

Hughes appeared on the threshold with the announcement that the baths were ready. He had known and suffered gladly most of that laughing assembly off and on for the past decade. “Put a nice cake ofdog-soap in each one, Hughes,” said Brakespear, “and have their clothes baked.... They’re trying to come the ‘Back to-Blighty-from-the-Trenches’ on us, these heroic figures from the Battle Fleet and Battle Cruiser Fleet. Ask ’em to tell you about the Battle of Jutland, Hughes.”

. . . . .

Dinner, with the mellow candlelight half revealing the portraits of bygone Aughtlones on the walls, had reached the duck-and-green-peas stage when Retrospection laid a cold finger on the mind of the Battle Fleet’s representative. “Very nearly thought our leave was going to be kyboshed,” he observed to Longridge.

“Last Monday? Yes, so did I. Directly we got the steaming signal I thought all was over. We didn’t know the battleships were out till we got to sea: heard you chatting to the Admiralty on the H.P. wireless wave, and then we thought there was something on.” The Battle Cruiser Wireless Expert chuckled. “After a bit the Hun woke up and started bleating, and we got scraps of Telefunken from the south, mixed up with pats on the back to our destroyers from the Admiralty.”

The youngest modern destroyer commander in the service moved uncomfortably in his chair.

“And in the morning ‘Peace, perfect peace’ from the flagship and ‘Back to harbour,’”said the gunnery lieutenant from the Battle Fleet. “The usual weary stunt. You bagged a Zepp, though, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Inquisitive blighter. You’d have enjoyed that.”

“Twelve-inch?”

“Shrapnel.”

“Ah,” said Jerome complacently, “that was our little show. Glad you all enjoyed yourselves.”

“Yes,” cut in Brakespear quickly, “you flushed ’em very nicely down south that night. We Destroyers had a very pretty little dust-up.”

“What did you do, Jerry?” asked Aughtlone. “We all seem to have been more or less mixed up in the affair—Foster, were you embroiled?”

The Minelayer chuckled. “Indirectly,” he said, “but nothing very spectacular. We’ve usually got home and tucked each other up in by-bye when the fireworks start, inourline of business!”

“Come on, Jerry,” said Mayhew; “what did you do in the Great War, daddy?”

“Well,” said the stout one, suffering Hughes to replenish his glass, “well, personally, I didn’t do a hell of a lot that night. But the—what d’ye call it?—cumulative effect wasn’t too bad. That was the night they sprang a new stunt on us. Things that looked like balls of fire—red-hot liquid stuff. I got a lump on my fuselage and it ran down the plane and dripped off—like phosphorus streaming off the blade of an oar in the dark.... I had a 530-lb. bomb tucked under my seat and I was nervous.... I’m getting old, anyway. Dam’ nearly thirty.”

“Start at the beginning,” said Aughtlone hungrily.

“No, no,” interrupted Longridge in a low voice. “Let him tell it in his own comic way. Jerry always begins somewhere near the end.”

The stout one assumed an injured expression. “What’s wrong? Iamstarting at the beginning.... We went up along the coast. I took a squadron of ’planes: Flight Leaders: two Canucks, a New Zealander, and an Oxford undergraduate who’d lost his young woman in theLusitaniaand didn’t care if it snowed ink: a Yank who’d been in Belgium when the Huns started what he called ‘getting gay’—newspaperreporter or something—and a Yorkshire dog-fancier—a quirk,[6]but full-out. They were all full-out, as a matter of fact: good lads, especially the Yank.” The narrator paused. “He’d seen a baby in a butcher’s shop—in Liège, I think it was. The Huns had cut its hands off and hung it on a hook.... He was not so much a scientific bomber, really, as zealous. Very zealous.... I lost the quirk, and one of my Canucks, but the other got back all right.”

“Alpha and Omega,” cut in Foster. “The beginning and the end. Now, Jerry, let’s have the story.”

“Hang it, I’ve told you the story. You know the rest, anyhow. I dropped my contribution to the gaiety of nations, and the lock-gates went. There were half a dozen destroyers in harbour, and they got the wind up them and bolted for the open sea——”

“That’s whenwenabbed ’em,” said Brakespear. “They were trying to nip for Ostend, and they put up a very pretty little scrap, thanks, Jerry. We Destroyers were waiting outside.”

“Not ’t all!” said the Flying Man modestly; “we’d had all the fun we wanted. There was a squadron of Handley Pagesthere, and some French machines, and they made the oil-tanks look like Cities of the Plain before they went home.” He turned to Longridge. “’Member the review at Spithead before the war—when they had that searchlight display, all the beams whirling round in the sky? You dined with me that night.”

Longridge nodded. “I remember. We went on deck to watch the performance.... It made me sick,” he concluded naïvely.

“Well,” said Jerome, “I looked back over my shoulder on the return journey, and thought of that night at Spithead. The sky looked like a huge Catherine wheel. We made a photographic reconnaissance next day....” he clucked softly with his tongue against his teeth. “Tony,” he said, “that place looked like your face would if you got small-pox after fighting ten rounds with Jack Johnson without gloves.”

“Thank you,” said his host. “Simile seems to be your strong point to-night.”

“It’s the drink,” said Longridge. “He develops a graphic style if you leave the decanter near him and don’t interrupt.”

“Where did you catch ’em, Brakes, you and your precious T.B.D.’s?” asked Foster. “We were going home when the fun started. Laid our eggs early and decided that thequiet life was the thing that really appealed to us.”

“Close in,” was the reply. “One Division cut ’em off and the other waited for ’em. It was a well-organised little show.” He laughed. “Ever since that show of theBroke’severy mother’s son in the Destroyer Force walks about with a fire-bar down the leg of his trousers—so as to have it handy, don’t you know.... My foremost guns’ crews spend their dog-watches sharpening their cutlasses on their razor-strops and making knuckle-dusters: ... the sailor is nothing if he isn’t thorough.

“Well, that night we picked out our opposite number by the name of his funnels, and I put my old hooker at him, an’ rammed him, full bore. Caught him rather far forward—farther than I meant to, but good enough for the purpose. It was like cutting cheese with a hot knife.... Then of course the matelots went berserk. I saw the gunner’s mate go over the side on to her forecastle, lugging a maxim with him and howling like a dervish at the head of a crowd that looked as if they’d rushed out of a pirate junk instead of a respectable British destroyer. My yeoman of signals borrowed my automatic pistol, and sprayed it about till I wrenched it away from him for fear he’d hit one of ourmen. The sub was clawing at her ensign with a party of die-hards round him laying about them with cutlasses like characters in a Shakespearian play, and to add to the excitement the watch below in the engine-room, who had just been relieved, were slinging scalding cocoa over the rails into the Huns’ faces.” The speaker wiped his mouth, after an interval for refreshment. “I’m still hoarse with laughing and bawling at the gunner’s mate not to start easing off the maxim into the crowd. And if you could have seen ’em lugging prisoners over the rail, and the Huns trying to pull them back by their feet—like a lot of demented people pulling crackers across a table! Lord! I shall never forget it if I live to be a million.

“Then she sank—just fell in half and went down. I had half my ship’s company in the water, as well as the Huns. They were just like a lot of fighting dogs after a hose had been played on them. Lucky the Hun hadn’t got a submarine about, because I had to stop and pick ’em all up. Another Hun destroyer had been torpedoed not far off, and was burning like a hayrick. She enlivened matters by taking ‘sitters’ at us with her after-gun while she sank, so I had to silence her first, and by the time Igot the last of my Death-or-Glory boys out of the water they were pretty far gone. I asked one fellow how he’d enjoyed himself, and he said, ‘Law, sir, fine! We was flickin’ off their ’eads wiv the cutlass, same’s it might ha’ bin dandelions!’”

“Take many prisoners?” asked Aughtlone, laughing.

“Fifty-one,andtheir flag. The sub told me he wanted to present it to the ‘Goat’ or Westminster Abbey, wasn’t sure which. Some of the Huns were pretty nearly done, and my surgeon probationer had a busy time getting life back into one or two. He carried them down to the stokehold and worked at ’em in the warmth. While he was down there, the sub came up to me and said there was another in the forecastle lockers, pegging out, he thought; so when things got quiet, I went along to see if I could do anything. He was just about all-in, but he had strength enough to put out his tongue at me——”

“Saucy puss!” from Jerome.

“He was clay cold, and no amount of rubbing would warm him, so I told a couple of braves to carry him down to the doctor in the stokehold. The Hun just knew enough English to catch the word ‘stokehold,’ and he thought I’d ordered him to beshoved into the furnace for putting out his tongue at me. Imagine the sort of minds they must have.”

“Their officers tell ’em those penny-dreadful stories to discourage a tendency to surrender,” said Foster.

“Well, it saved his life, anyway, that spasm. He yelled and fought and bit and kicked. It took five men to get him along the upper-deck, and all the way he was shouting: ‘Ach, no! No!—No!—No!—No!’ at the top of his voice. By the time we got him to the stokehold hatchway he’d recovered all the animation he’d ever had, and there wasn’t any need for the doctor!”

“What was the total bag?” asked Mayhew.

“Four—one rammed, two torpedoed, and one sunk by gunfire by the light cruisers. There were six all-told.”

“But,” interrupted Longridge, “doesn’t it rather tickle you to think of our being able to wipe the floor with their destroyers and not a blessed capital ship dares come out of Wilhelmshaven to save ’em! There we were in the Battle Cruisers, trailing the tail of our coat all round the Heligoland Bight, and—nothing doing, if you please. Ain’t that what’s called Sea Power?”

“Hum’m,” said Foster, and chuckled.“I don’t know about Sea Power: I’m only a humble Minelayer. But this may throw some light on the situation.” He drew a pocket-book from his pocket. “I saw a translation of a paragraph from a Dutch paper in the press this morning. I cut it out to send my skipper in case he hadn’t seen it.” He handed the slip to Aughtlone. “I thought it would cheer him up.”

“The crew of the—— Lightship report that at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning a number of very heavy explosions occurred in a southerly direction. In several cases a sheet of flame was seen to ascend to an altitude of at least 150 metres. One of the men who had passed through the North Sea on the night of the Battle of Jutland stated that he recognised the flashes as from big ships blowing up.”

Aughtlone read the cutting aloud, and handed it back. “That was your dirty work, was it?”

The minelayer laughed. “Act o’ God, we like to call it,” he said. “Or in the words of that beautiful poem:

“The boy, oh, where was he?”

Aughtlone joined in the laughter. “That’s all very fine,” he said, “but didn’t any of your lighthouse friends further north observemy little contretemps later on in the morning? But perhaps they wouldn’t notice a mere minesweeper blowing up.” He removed the stoppers from the decanters and pushed them to Mayhew on his left. “That Zepp you were talking about evidently gave the tip that you were out to a mine-laying submarine, because we located a minefield on what would have been the Battle Fleet’s course if you’d come south. I lost a paddler clearing it, and got a swim before breakfast.”

“How did you know the minefield was there?” asked Longridge.

“Dutch ship blew up. ‘Matter of fact, she blew up on a stray one. I went to the position she’d given us, and before we started sweeping we were on top of Fritz’s eggs which he’d intended for you. Ah, well, we raked ’em up and I got my leave, so we won’t bear Fritz any malice this time.” He paused, glass in hand.

“The King,” he said quietly.

“The King,” murmured the others. “Yes, I got my leave out of that night’s work, too,” said the destroyer captain. “Rather damaged our classic profile, and had to dock for a few days to straighten the stem....”

Beyond the open bay windows the bluedusk was closing down on the yews and scented borders. The long, deep drone of a cockchafer went past and died to nothing.

The host sent the decanters on their second round and leaned forward a little in his chair.

“It’s been jolly nice to see you dear old things again,” he said, “and talk over the War, as we swore we would some day when we were kids.” He paused. “And now there’s a toast I vote we drink. He—he’d have been here if this dinner had been a month earlier. As it is——” he raised his glass—“we can only drink to his memory.”

No name was mentioned. They nodded; drank gravely, in silence and perfect comprehension.

Brakespear, facing his host, broke the silence. “I saw him a couple of days ago,” he said quietly.

“Eh?” ejaculated Jerome sharply.

“But,” said Foster, “his boat was lost—oh, more than three weeks ago.”

Brakespear nodded. “I know. But they salved her and brought her in, near where my ship was lying. Dacre—the submarine one, not his brother—went on board to make an examination and—and take the bodies out. So I went too, because heand I—I was very fond of him....” Brakespear reached for the cigar lighter.

“What happened?” asked Mayhew. “We never hear any details of these things up north.”

“Well, they got holed and sank stern first apparently. Stuck in the bottom. However, they managed to stop the hole up with clothing and tallow and stopped the inrush of water: but they couldn’t move the boat. Blew everything and shifted weights, but she wouldn’t budge. Then the first lieutenant volunteered to go out through the bow torpedo tube. They tied a message to his wrist and he crawled into the tube: they fired it with compressed air, as if he’d been a torpedo. They waited for a couple of hours, and then someone opened the tube door, just to make sure.... But he was still there—jambed....”

The butler entered with the coffee, and the narrator was silent till he had gone.

“You know the foremost hatch in those boats, for lowering torpedoes?” he resumed. “Apparently they decided to try getting a big air pressure in the boat, then open this hatch and chance being blown through to the surface in the bubble.” The speaker puffed a cloud of smoke and watched it eddy about the flowers in the centre of the table.“So they stripped and put on swimming collars and life-belts, and mustered two-deep under the hatchway.”

Longridge was tracing a pattern in the ash from his cigarette on the side of his dessert-plate. “All of ’em?” he interrupted. “Shouldn’t have thought there was room.”

“No there wasn’t. There wasn’t room forhimor his coxswain. We found those two fully dressed, without life-belts or anything, right the other end of the compartment away from any hope of escape. But he wrote his report, giving clear and explicit directions for salving, amongst other things, and tied it to the second coxswain’s wrist.... Then when they were all ready he gave the word—from the other end of the compartment—and the men all heaved the hatch up together.”

Behind the speaker’s shoulders the blue oblongs of the windows had darkened into blackness. A nightingale far off among the laurels was pouring out her liquid song into the night, and for a while Brakespear seemed to be listening to it, twirling the stem of his wine-glass absently between finger and thumb. No one spoke.

“It was one of those stupid little accidents,” he went on presently, still in thesame low, grave tones, “a thing so utterly insignificant, that stood between Life and Death for them. Yet it happened. The hatch opened about six inches and jambed. They could neither raise nor lower it. The water just poured in.”

“Drowned ’em,” said Longridge tensely. The superfluity of the remark seemed to strike him. “Of course,” he added, as if talking to himself.

“Yes.”

“And they were still two-deep when you found them?” asked Foster.

“Yes. There must have been perfect discipline from first to last. And his letter——”

The speaker’s voice caught abruptly, as a trailing garment catches in a nail. The ensuing silence remained unbroken till Aughtlone slowly pushed back his chair.

“I vote we go and have a game of pool,” he said quietly.

. . . . .

The hall clock chimed one on a thin scandalised note as the candle-lit procession wended its way bedwards up the wide stair-way. It was one of the Aughtlone traditions that the old house should remain lit by lamps and candles.

Aughtlone led the way, and, as he reachedthe gallery overlooking the hall, he turned, smiling, and raised his candle above his head as if to light the way better for his guests. They came towards him by ones and twos, Jerome encircling Foster’s neck with his arm and crooning softly to himself, a picture of Falstaffian contentment: Mayhew, with one hand on the balustrade, looking back over his shoulder to address some laughing remark to Longridge at his heels; Brakespear bringing up the rear, grave and thoughtful as was his wont, his thin, handsome face white as ivory against the dark panelling.

“Hi, Podgie!” called Mayhew, “ain’t they goin’ to make you a Major-General in the Air Force, or something? What’s all this talk about amalgamating the R.N.A.S. and R.F.C.?”

The Flying Man reached the landing and disentangled his arm from his companion. “I shall be a Lieutenant-Colonel,” he said. “A Lieutenant-Colonel—me, what’s been in the Navy, man and boy, these fifteen years.” He frowned severely at an armour-clad effigy against the wall. “Amalgamate——”

“Never mind,” said Foster. “Never mind, Podgie,wedon’t care. We shall know you couldn’t help being a Lieutenant-Colonel, and that you belonged to the Navy once.”

“He’ll always belong to it,” said Mayhew.“He’s only camouflaged, and one of these days he’ll come back to us. The Navy ain’t like any other profession: you can’t suddenly become something else by dressing up in a different rig”—he pointed to the effigy in armour—“any more than I’d cease to be a Gunnery Lieutenant if I shoved on that fellow’s superfine tin suitings.”

“This,” said Longridge, “is developing into a ‘Branch-kagg.’[7]I’m going to turn in.”

“Breakfast at ten!” shouted the host as Longridge detached himself from the group and disappeared up a corridor.

“And, anyhow,” said Brakespear, “even if our Podgie fades away, to become a Lieutenant-Colonel in a gorgeous uniform——”

“Sky-blue, ain’t it, Podgie?” interposed Aughtlone. Brakespear disregarded the interruption.

“Even if, I say, Podgie departs from our midst, the Navy remains. And if I—even I—go up in the next ‘Jutland,’ or Foster trips over one of his infernal machines accidentally in the dark——”

“Or I get wafted skywards clearing a mine-field next week,” said Aughtlone.

“Exactly.... Others would take ourplaces. The individual doesn’t count.—Podgie, you’re dripping candle-grease on Tony’s ormulu carpet....”

“I’m going to bed,” said the stout one. “You’re all getting a trifle maudlin....”

Foster yawned. “I’m going too. But Brakes is right. What’s it matter what happens to us as long as we shove the wheel round a spoke or two in our short trick?” He wagged his head solemnly. “Life’s dev’lish short, anyway.... Come on, Podgie. ‘And so to bed.’ ... ’Night all!”

Aughtlone watched the twin glimmers fade away down the long corridor and turned to his last remaining guest.

“We’re a tongue-tied breed,” he said. “We’ve been trying to voice some tremendous sentiment that’s been struggling for expression all the evening, and——”

“It’s had us beat,” said Brakespear. He made a circle in the air with the wavering candle-flame. “It’s too big. We’ve all seen so much in this bloody war, collectively.... We feel that we are the Navy and the Navy is us; yet, somehow, we don’t count much as individuals.”

“It’s because we’re finite,” said Aughtlone. He leaned against the carved balustrade that swept round and up into the darkness of the great house, and staredabsently at the mailed figure standing in the shadows: the light of the candles flickered on hauberk and vizor through which the breath of some forgotten ancestor had once come and gone. “The individual passes——”

“Yes,” said Brakespear. He took a step along the thick carpet and halted. “But the Navy’s eternal.”

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FINISPrinted in Great Britain by Hasell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

FOOTNOTES:[1]“Belly-muster,” as its name gracefully implies, was a parade of lightly clad suspects in procession past the sick bay while the lynx-eyed surgeon scanned each brisket for traces of incipient chicken-pox rash.[A]The chapter bearing this title was written before the passing of the Air Force Act. It is included in this book “without prejudice,” as the lawyers say.[2]The Riddle of the Sands.[3]White mice were carried in the early types of submarines to give warning, by their antics, of an escape of gas.[4]By the ancient custom of the Navy a defaulter removes his cap when his case is investigated by the captain.[5]Discharged Dead. The official notation of death in H.M. Navy.[6]A novice.[7]An argument as to the comparative merits and demerits of the respective branches of H.M. Naval Service.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]“Belly-muster,” as its name gracefully implies, was a parade of lightly clad suspects in procession past the sick bay while the lynx-eyed surgeon scanned each brisket for traces of incipient chicken-pox rash.

[A]The chapter bearing this title was written before the passing of the Air Force Act. It is included in this book “without prejudice,” as the lawyers say.

[2]The Riddle of the Sands.

[3]White mice were carried in the early types of submarines to give warning, by their antics, of an escape of gas.

[4]By the ancient custom of the Navy a defaulter removes his cap when his case is investigated by the captain.

[5]Discharged Dead. The official notation of death in H.M. Navy.

[6]A novice.

[7]An argument as to the comparative merits and demerits of the respective branches of H.M. Naval Service.

[The image of the book's back cover is unavailable.]

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