H. M. S.

THE room was exactly the same as any room in any Government building, except that the Naval observer would have at once noticed one factthat the furniture was of the unchanging Admiralty pattern. The roll-top desk, the chairs, and even the lamp-shades, would have been to him familiar friends. They were certainly familiar to the PostCaptain who sat at the desk. Captain Henry Ranson had been a noted Commander before his retirement-a man of whom many tales, both true and apocryphai, still circulated when Senior Officers of the Fleet forgathered at the lunoh intervals of Courts-Martial and Inquiries. He had little portunity in his present War appointment to display any of the characteristics on which his Sagas had been based, for neither seamanship, daring, or, well-Independent Initiative, were quite in keeping with the routine of an Admiralty Office.

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To-day he was feeling the olaustrophobia of London more acutely than usual. The sun was shining through the big window across the room, and he wanted to rise and look out at the blue sky and white cloud-tufts that he knew to be showing over the buildings across the Horse Guards Parade. His desk gave him no view through the windowhe knew the weakness of his

powers of concentration on his eternal paper work too well to have allowed himself such a distraction; but as the door opened to admit his clerk-a firm and earnest civilian with the zeal of monastic officialdom shining through his spectacles

he rose abruptly and moved out into the sunlight glare.

"Yes, Collins? What is it?"

"A small matter, sir, which is not quite in order. If you will glance through this you will no doubt agree with me."

The Captain took the sheets from the clerk's outstretched hand and moved a little away from the glaring light to read.

SIR,-I have the honour to bring to your notice the conduct of Skipper A. P. Marsh, of the Admiralty tug Annie on the 22nd-23rd Laurie,

November 1917, and I beg to recommend him for decoration of the following

in view

facts:

On November 21st, 1917, the steamer Makalaka, homeward bound with corn, was shelled by a U-boat when near the Irish coast. The enemy was dealt with by a patrol in the vicinity, but the Makalaka, proceeding east at full speed in accordance with instructions, was thrown out of her reckoning by a damaged compass, and found herself at dusk on a lee shore off the Galway

coast, with her shaft broken (a result of shell damage which had not been realised to be serious at the time it was incurred). Skipper Marsh, seeing her flares from his patrol to seaward, most gallantly gallantly olosed her and took her in tow in a rising N.W. gale. In view of the probability of the attempt to tow failing, the orew of the Makalaka were taken aboard the tug, but the towing was continued through a full gale lasting twenty-four hours until the ship was out of danger. I have the honour to be, sir, &o.

The Post-Captain folded the letter carefully and placed it on his desk. The clerk retrieved it, and moved towards the door. The Captain turned, "What are you going to do with that, Collins?"

"I take it that it needs only the usual reply, sir-that this is not approved-with a reference to the regulation bearing on the case."

"Why Collins?"

not approved,

The clerk was shocked, and his tone showed it. "Because that decoration is for gallant action in face of the enemy, and this case does not come within its scope. In any case the man will get salvage." [The Captain made an im. patient gesture.] "If the Royal Humane Society care to" he stopped, because the Captain had walked to the window, and, in obvious inattention to the speaker, was staring out across the wide Horse Guards and far beyond

the fleecy clouds that drifted across the sky over the great sea of buildings that hemmed him in.

Captain Ranson had gone on a journey-back through forty years years of time, and across eighty-one degrees of longitude.

He ran up the gangway, straightened his helmet and dirk-belt, and approached the Commander, who, a tall darkfeatured figure, was standing looking down on the boat as she rose and fell alongside to the gentle heave of the Indian Ocean-"Second cutter manned, sir."

The Commander turned and looked the boy over beneath his heavy eyebrows. "When are you going to set up a new port shroud?" he asked.

The Midshipman fingered the seam of his trousers, and looked carefully at the buttons on the Commander's tunic, "I thought, sir, that is, we've got a new shroud all fitted, but I thought-the coxswain said, sir-that the old would do for to-day as the wind's nothing. . . ."

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The barometric indications of the Commander's eyes showed threatening weather. He took the boy's arm in the grasp of a heavy hand and led him to the rail abreast the swinging mastheads of the boat.

"Now listen, young gentleman," he said. "What the coxswain said isn't evidence. It's you that command that boat, and you that will handle and command her. Don't talk

to me again as if you were a schoolboy." The Midshipman shivered and squinted cautiously up to see if the stormsignals were still in evidence. The dark stern eyes were looking down at him in a way that made him feel as if he was some luckless worm that had unhappily bored its way up into the publicity of an aviary. The Commander moved his hand and turned the boy to face him. "Now, you remember this, young gentleman, only seamen come through gales safely, it's the fools that go to sea with rusty shrouds and weak rigging. And if you're to be a seaman you must never go to sea, even in a flat calm, unless your ship is ready for a gale of wind. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then don't forget it, or I'll have you beaten till you grow corns. Now shove off, and pull away three cables on the port bow, drop your anchor on the shoal, and fit that new shroud. Remain there till the ship has got under way, done her night-firing, and signalled you to carry on. You will then close and weigh the target moorings, having the target ready for hoisting when the ship comes back to you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"What have you got on your anchor?"

"A hundred and twenty fathom, sir-of four-inch."

"That is enough-there is thirty fathom on the shoalCarry on!"

The Midshipman ran down

The last shot kicked up a yellow fountain of spray in the glare of the searchlight, and ricoohetted, humming, over the target and on towards Malaya. A rocket sailed up from the distant ship-the searchlight flickered out a couple of Morse signs, and went out, and in the velvety darkness of a tropic night the hands went forward in the outter to weigh the anchor, the process of "shortening-in" having been aocomplished a full hour ago. As the Midshipman stood up to superintend the operation, he saw a queer white line spreading and brightening along the horizon to the westward. A dash of rain struck his face, and a little gust of wind moaned past him. The orew looked up from their work to wonder, and in a matter of seconds the squall was on them. The wet hawser slipped and raced out, the hands jumping aft to get clear of the leaping turns as the cutter swung and drew hard on her anchor to the pressure of a tremendous wind. The white line rushed down on them, and showed as a turmoil of frothing sea, beaten flat by the wind into a sheet of phosphorescence veiled by lowflying spray. For a few

minutes they crouched and endured the sudden cold and wet, then a yaw of the boat sent the bowmen forward with suspicion in their minds. "Up and down, sir-anchor's aweigh," came the report, in a voice that started as a roar, but reached the Midshipman aft as a faint high wail. The Midshipman faced round to leeward, and thought hard. He had been anchored on the only possible shoal, and once driven off that there was no holdingground till he should reach the edge of the surf off Trincomalee, twenty miles away-all between being charted as "Five hundred and no bottom." He oalled to the coxswain and olawed his way forward, picking up men by name as he passed them. They hove up their anchor, secured mainsail, awning, and mainmast in a dreadful tangle of rope and canvas to the anchor-ringhitched an outlying corner of the tangle to a bight far up the hawser, and threw all over the bows. The cutter steadied head to wind, and the hands moved aft to raise the bow and protect themselves against the steady driving of the spray.

The Midshipman lay across the backboard, staring out to the port-quarter. Through the white haze he could see, at regular intervals, a quickflashing gleam of yellow light. He knew what it was, and it did not comfort him. It was all he could see of the twentythousand candle-power of Foul Point Light, and although it was not getting much clearer it was certainly "drawing

from aft forward. He had the rough lie of the coast in his head, and he was just realising two things-first, that in spite of the sea-anchor he was being blown to leeward and ashore at an incredible rate; and second, that if he could not round Foul Point across the wind, he was going to be food for the big surf-sharks before the morning.

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He roused the crew again, and set down to the oars. fore half the oars were out he had realised the futility of the effort, and was trying to get them back without further damage. He corrected his error with the loss of four oars and several feet of the cutter's gunwale-broken off when the wind tore the long ash oars away. As he remembered later, it was at this point that Foul Point Light began to show clearly through the spray, and that his coxswain began to sing an interminable hymn in the stern sheets, and that the dark-faced Celtic stroke-oar, a man who had the reputation of being the worst oharacter in all the ship, took over the helpless coxswain's duty. The Midshipman was staring fascinated at the swinging beam of light that was beating on them from the sand-spit broad on the quarter, when the strokeoar's voice in his ear changed him from a boy to an officer"What'll you do now, sir?"

The question was answered on the instant-" All hands, up masts and sails. Close-reef both, and pass the hawser aft. Lash out now, lads, and get down to it."