electric light, his face buried in his hands, and a Bible before him.

"What's the matter, Fletcher? you look jolly mouldy," he said, stopping at the end of the table. "What's the matter? Bad news?"

"Yes, sir," he said gently, standing up, one hand pushing his gold spectacles back on his nose, the other marking the place in the book. "A letter from my wife. Our last boy's been killed in France, sir. That's the third; he was a corporal, sir."

His old, refined, tired face looked so abjectly miserable that the Orphan did not know what to say. "Come and get a drink. That'll buck you up," he stuttered.

But Fletcher shook his head. "I'm an abstainer, sir; thank you very much." And the snotty, muttering "I'm sorry", went away along the rest of the noisy, crowded mess deck towards the gun-room.

There was comparative quiet there. The Sub and Uncle Podger were sitting in front of the stove, reading.

"You know old Fletcher—the stoker of my boat; he's frightfully miserable; he's sitting down in his mess looking awful; he's just heard that his last son's been killed; I wish we could do something for him. The letter must have come when I brought off the postman."

"How about a drink?" asked the Sub, scratching his head. "I am sorry."

"Who's that?" asked Uncle Podger; "that old chap with the gold specs?"

The Orphan nodded.

"Fancy having to stick it out—all the misery of it—in a mess deck, with hundreds of chaps cursing and joking all round you," the Sub said. "I don't see what we can do to help him."

"You've got a cabin," Uncle Podger suggested. "Get him down in it; shut him in for an hour. What he wants most is to be alone."

"Right oh!" said the Sub, springing to his feet. "I've got the first watch; he can stay there till 'pipe down';" and he sent Barnes, the purple-faced marine, to find Fletcher and tell him that the Sub-lieutenant wanted him at once in his cabin.

The Sub, swinging his mighty shoulders, stalked down to his cabin, and presently there was a knock outside, and Fletcher peered in. "Yes, sir?"

"I've just heard, Fletcher," the Sub said, holding out his hand. "We are all very sorry; you'd like to be by yourself for a while. Stay here till 'pipe down'; no one shall come near you."

He pushed the old man down in the chair, drew the door across, and went into the gun-room.

A few minutes later the Pimple, who had been to his chest, outside the Sub's cabin, came in.

"Old Fletcher's blubbing like anything," he said. "I heard him."

"Get out of it, you little beast!" roared out the Sub. "Get out of the gun-room till dinnertime. Who told you to go sneaking round?" and Uncle Podger got in a well-judged kick which deposited the miserable Pimple on the deck outside.

The Orphan had the "middle" watch that night, so he turned into his hammock early, and was roughly shaken before it seemed to him that he had been to sleep a minute.

"Still raining?" he grunted to the corporal of the watch who had called him, as he climbed out and hunted round for his clothes.

"Raining and blowing 'orrible!"

He groped his way for'ard, only half awake, stumbling on the unsteady slippery deck-plates, barking his shins against a coaming, and bumping into the rest of the watch as they came up from the lighted mess deck like blind men. He "took over" from the snotty of the first watch, and, as soon as his sleepy eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, began pacing up and down across the narrow deck.

The gale still howled wildly through the fore shrouds, the wet signal halyards still flapped noisily against each other, and the rain still came driving under the bridge; but by this time the Achates had altered course and was running up-Channel, so had the seas on her starboard quarter, and though she was rolling heavily no spray came over her. That was one thing to be thankful for, the Orphan thought, as he looked into the utter blackness ahead of him.

Presently he leant against the conning-tower. But there was nothing for his eyes to rest on, and the screaming of the gale and the roaring of the rushing seas mingling together to make one continual, tumultuous clamour in his ears, lulled him nearly to sleep.

He started—he thought he was dancing with the little lady in white and blue—grinned to himself, and went up on the bridge to have a yarn with Bubbles, who was now the midshipman of the watch; tracked him by his laugh and his snorting noise; doubled up he was, at some yarn the Navigating Lieutenant was telling him—he always laughed long before a yarn came to an end!

"The ass jumped on to the top of the conning-tower—got an arm round the periscope tube, and began banging away at the periscope with a hammer!" the Navigator was shouting as the Orphan came up. (Bubbles threw his head back and roared.) "He'd only got in a few whacks when the old submarine began to dive; down went the conning-tower and the periscope, and the last that was seen of him was a hand and a hammer giving one last whack!"

Bubbles choked and snorted with laughter.

"What was it—a German submarine—was he drowned—did they catch the submarine?" the Orphan asked.

"Yes, they did. It had been badly hit before. We swept for it, and found it three days later, and the brave ass was still clinging to the periscope tube with his feet twisted round the conning-tower rail."

"Who was he?" gasped Bubbles when he could stop laughing.

"No one in particular, only the deck hand of a trawler," the Navigator said, in his cynical way.

Mr. Meredith, the officer of the watch, a tall, good-looking Naval Reserve lieutenant with a weather-beaten face, and rather bald-headed, came up. "It's five bells, you fellows. How about some cocoa? I've got a tin of gingerbreads."

"That's the ticket, old chap!" the Navigator cried, and Bubbles was sent off to make the cocoa and bring it up to the chart-house.

Ten minutes later, the cheery chart-house was filled with the fragrant odour of cocoa, the Navigator's charts had been rolled aside; two were sitting on the table, the other on the settee which was the Navigator's bed at sea, all with steaming cups of cocoa in their hands.

"Where's the 'War Baby'? Go and fetch the War Baby," the Navigator shouted; so off Bubbles went, the light going out as the door slid back, and coming on again as it closed and "made" the electric circuit.

Presently, in came the youngest-looking thing in soldiers anyone ever saw, with a face as pink and white as the China Doll's, and the first buds of a tiny moustache on his upper lip.

"It's perfectly damnable outside," he piped in his girlish voice, as he seized a biscuit and a cup of cocoa.

"Hullo!" sang out the Navigator, as they all heard a knock on a door beneath them; "there's someone banging at the Skipper's door." (The Captain, when at sea, slept in a tiny cabin immediately beneath