However, I borrowed a suit from the skipper—and he wasn't what you'd call fastidious in his dress either——"

The Volunteer made a little grimace at the recollection, because he was a man of refined tastes and raced his own yacht across the Atlantic in peace time.

"It was too rough to board, but the submarine closed to within hailing distance, and a little pipsqueak of a Lieutenant, nervous as a cat, talked to us through a megaphone. Fortunately I can speak Norwegian…."

"What about the skipper of the wind-jammer?" interrupted the other.

"He kept his mouth shut. Wasn't much in sympathy with the company that owned the submarine, having lost a brother the month before in a steamship shelled and sunk without warning. You can't please everybody, it seems, when you start out to act mad in a submarine. Well, this lad examined our papers through a glass and I chucked him a cigar…. He hadn't had a smoke for a week. Then he sheered off, because he saw something on the horizon that scared him. He was very young, and, as I've said, nerves like fiddle strings."

The Reserve man lit a cigarette and inhaled a great draught of smoke. There was something in his alert, intent expression reminiscent of a bull terrier when he hears rats scuffling behind a wainscot.

The war has evolved specialists without number in branches of Naval warfare hitherto unknown and unsuspected. Among these is the Submarine Hunter. The Reserve man belonged to this type, which is simply a reversion to the most primitive and savage of the fighting instincts. At the first mention of the German submarine he leaned forward eagerly.

"Threw him a cigar, did you?" he said grimly. "Sorry I wasn't there. I'd have thrown him something. That's my line of business—Fritz-hunting."

The ribbon of the Distinguished Service Cross on the lapel of his monkey-jacket showed that he apparently pursued this branch of sport with some effect. "Been at it from the kick-off," he continued. "Started with herring nets, you know!" He laughed a deep bark of amusement. "Lord! We had a lot to learn. We began from an East Coast fishing port, working with crazy drifters manned by East Coast fishermen. There was a retired Admiral in charge, as tough an old terror as ever pulled on a sea boot—and half a dozen of us all together, some Active Service and some Reserve like me. Navy? Bless you, we were the Navy, that old Admiral and us six." The speaker raised his voice to make plain his words above the rattle of the train. "There was a lot of talk in the papers about Jellicoe and Beatty and the Grand Fleet and the Battle Cruisers, but they didn't come our way and we didn't trouble them. We had a couple of score of trawlers and drifters and four hundred simple fishermen to cram the fear of the Lord into. That was our job!"

He spoke with the peculiar word-sparing vividness of the man to whom the Almighty had vouchsafed the mysterious gift of handling other men. "Long-shore and deep-sea fishermen, good material, damned good, but they took a lot of coaxing." He paused and contemplated his hands resting on his knees. Scarred by frost-bite they were, with huge bones protruding like knuckle-dusters. "Coaxing, mind you," he repeated. "I've been chief of an Argentine cattle-boat for four years and Second on a windjammer round the Horn for three years before that. I know when to drive and when to coax. Never touched a man, sir." He paused, rubbing off the moisture condensed on the window, to peer info the night.

Here, then, was an Apostle of Naval Discipline among a community of fishermen whose acknowledged tradition it was to get drunk when and where it suited their inclinations, to put to sea in the top-hats of their ancestors and return to harbour as weather or the fish dictated, whose instinctive attitude towards strangers was about as encouraging as that of the Solomon Islanders.

"We took 'em and trained 'em—gradually, you understand. Taught 'em to salute the King's uniform, an' just why orders had to be obeyed: explained it all gently"—the stupendous hand made a gesture in the air as if stroking something. "Then after a while we moved 'em on to something else—the Game itself, in fact—and my merry men tumbled to it in no time. It was in their blood, I guess. They'd hunted something all their lives, and they weren't scared because they had to take on something a bit bigger. I tell you, after a few weeks I just prayed for a submarine to come along and show what we could do."

The Volunteer grinned understandingly. "Well?" he said.

"We got one a week later. Just for all the world like a bloomin' salmon. First we knew that there was one about was the Merrie Maggie, one of our trawlers, blowing up. Well, I'd been over the same spot in the morning, and there were no mines there then, so I knew our friend wasn't far off…." The Submarine Hunter mused for a moment, staring at his clasped hands, with the faint blue tattoo-marks showing under the tan. "We got him at dawn—off a headland…. Oh, best bit of sport that ever I had!" The speaker's hard grey eye softened at the recollection. "We've got lots since, but never one as neat as that. He just came to the surface and showed his tail-fin and——" the huge hands made a significant downward gesture.

If you have ever heard a Regimental Bombing Officer describe the clearing of an enemy traverse, you will understand the complete expressiveness of that gesture.

"I'm going North now to join a new base up there. There are one or two dodges that I can put them up to, I reckon."

The Volunteer filled and lit a pipe.

"Pretty work it sounds. Ours is duller, on the whole, but we get our share of excitement. You never sight a steamer flying neutral colours without the possibility of her hoisting the German ensign and slipping a torpedo into you. That's why we introduced the Red Pendant business. It meant inconvenience for all parties, but neutrals have only got the Hun to thank for it."

"Never heard of it," said the other. "Fritz-hunting is my game."

"Well, you see, ever since they've tried to slip raiders through the blockade we can't afford to close a stranger flying neutral colours within gun or torpedo range. So we had to explain to neutrals that a red flag hoisted by one of our merchant cruisers is the signal to heave to instantly, and that brings her up well out of range. Then we drop a boat and steam off and signal her to close the boat, and the boarding officer goes on board and examines her papers. If she's got a cargo without guarantees she's sent into one of the examination ports under an armed guard to have it overhauled properly."

"For contraband?"

"Yes, and to see that the commodity she carries isn't in excess of the ration allowed to the country of destination—if she's eastward bound, that is. Also the passengers are scrutinised for suspects, and so on; it's a big job, one way and another. That's all done by the Examination Service at the port, though, and I don't envy them the job. We only catch 'em and bring 'em in."

For a while longer he talked between puffs at his pipe of the "twilight service" rendered by the Armed Merchant-cruisers. He spoke of grim stern-chases under the Northern Lights, of perils from ice and submarines and winter gales, while the Allied strangle-hold tightened month by month, remorselessly, relentlessly.

"It's a peaceful sort of job, though, on the whole," he concluded.
"Nobody worries us. The public, most of 'em, don't know we exist.
Journalists don't want to come and visit us much," he chuckled. "We
don't find our way into the illustrated papers…."