Fleet. Better man your boat from the boom and shove straight off. Smack it about!"

The small figure in oilskins—who, as a matter of fact, was none other than the Midshipman of the Second Picket Boat, brass funnel, vermilion-painted cowls and all—turned and scampered forward. It was pitch dark, and the wind that swept in rainy gusts along the battery caught the flaps of his oilskins and buffeted the sleep out of him. Overside the lights of the Fleet blinked in an indeterminate confusion through the rain, and for an instant a feeling of utter schoolboy woe, of longing for the security of his snug hammock, filled his being. Then the short years of his training told. Somewhere ahead, in that welter of rain and darkness, there was work to be done—to be accomplished, moreover, swiftly and well. It was an order.

Stumbling on to the forecastle, he slipped a life-belt over his shoulders, climbed the rail, and descended the ship's side by a steel ladder, until he reached the lower boom. It jutted out into the darkness, a round, dimly-discerned spar, and secured to it by a boat-rope at the farthest point of his vision, he saw his boat. The circular funnel-mouth ringed a smoky glow, and in the green glare of a side-light one of the bowmen was reaching for the ladder that hung from the boom. Very cautiously he felt his way out along it steadied by a man-rope, breast high. Looking downward, he saw the steamboat fretting like a dog in leash; the next instant she was lurching forward on the crest of a wave and as suddenly dropped away again in a shower of spray. Releasing his grip with one hand he slipped astride of the boom, wriggled on his stomach till his feet touched rungs of a Jacob's ladder, and so hung in a few feet above the tumbling water.

"'Arf a mo', sir," said a deep voice behind him. The boat's bows were plunging just below ... the ladder tautened with a jerk.

"Now, sir!" said the voice. He relaxed his hold and dropped nimbly on to the triangular space in the bows. As he landed, the Jacob's ladder shot upwards into the darkness, as though snatched by an unseen hand.

Steadying himself by the rail along the engine-room casing he hurried to the wheel. A bearded petty officer moved aside as he came aft. This was his Coxswain, a morose man about the age of his father, who obeyed orders like an automaton, and had once (mellowed by strong waters) been known to smile.

"Cast off forward!" The engine-room bell rang twice, and the Midshipman gave a quick turn to the wheel. For an instant the boat plunged as if in uncertainty, then swung round on the slope of a slate-grey wave and slid off on her quest. Forward in the bows the bowmen were crouched, peering through the rain. Presently one of them hailed hoarsely.

"Port a bit, sir," supplemented the Coxswain. "That's them, there!" He pointed ahead to where indistinct shapes showed black against the troubled waters. The bell rang again in the tiny engine-room, and the Leading Stoker, scenting adventures, threw up the hatch and thrust a head and hairy chest into the cold air. His interest in the proceedings apparently soon waned, however, for he shut the hatch down again and busied himself mysteriously—always within reach of the throttle and reversing-lever—with an oil-can.

Going very slow, the boat crept alongside the foremost lighter, a huge derelict that, when loaded, carried fifty tons of coal. They had been moored alongside one another to the wharf, but, rocking in the swell, had chafed through their moorings and broken adrift.

Now to take in tow an unwieldy lighter in the dark with a heavy swell running, and to moor it safely in the spot whence it came, is a piece of work that requires no small judgment. However, one by one, the three truants were captured and secured, and then, with the grey dawn of a winter morning breaking overhead, the picket boat swung round on her return journey. On the way she passed another boat racing shoreward for the mails. The Midshipman at the wheel raised his hand with a little gesture of salutation, and she went by in a shower of spray.

Half an hour later the Midshipman of the Second Picket Boat, garbed in the "rig of the day," was ladling sugar over his porridge with the abandon of one who is seventeen and master of his fate. A messenger appeared at the gunroom door—

"Duty Steam Boat's called away, sir."

Her Midshipman locked away his pet marmalade-pot (for there are limits even to the communism of a gunroom) and reached for his cap and dirk. "We ain't got much money," he observed grimly, "but we do see life!"

II.

CAPTAIN'S DEFAULTERS.

At the last stroke of six bells in the Forenoon Watch the Marine bugler drew himself up stiffly, as one on whom great issues hung, and raising his bugle sent the imperious summons echoing along the upper deck. Clattering forward along the battery he halted at the break of the forecastle and repeated the blast; then, shaking the moisture from the instrument, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and strutted aft. He had sounded "Captain's Defaulters."

An Able Seaman burnishing a search-light on the boat-deck heard the strident bugle-call and winced. Hurriedly he replaced his cleaning rags, and with a moistened forefinger and thumb adjusted a dank curl that peeped beneath his cap. He shared the belief, not uncommon among sailor-men, that the Captain's judgment at the defaulter-table is duly swayed by the personal appearance of the delinquent. Eyeing his inverted reflection in the big concave mirror, he screwed his face into an expression of piteous appeal, and, cap in hand, repeated several times in varying notes of regretful surprise: "I 'adn't 'ad no more'n a drop, sir, w'en I come over all dizzy." The rehearsal concluded, he flung himself pell-mell down the ladder. On the way he met a messmate ascending, who remonstrated in the brusque parlance of the tar.

"In the bloomin' rattle, I am," explained the disturber of traffic.

"Wha's up, then?"

The other made a little upward gesture with his elbow and gave a laugh of pleasant retrospection. "'Strewth!" he supplemented. "Wasn't 'arf blind, neither," implying that when last ashore he had looked upon the cup when it was very ruddy indeed.

At the screen door to the quarter-deck he overtook a companion in misfortune en route to "toe pitch." This was a frightened Second-class Stoker, harried aft by one of the Ship's Police at the shambling gait officially recognised as the "steady double." Together they saluted and stepped on to the quarter-deck, where, already standing between his escort, a sullen-eyed deserter, captured the previous day, scowled into vacancy. The new-comers took their places in the melancholy line, stood easy, and commenced to preen themselves furtively, after the manner of sailors about to come under the direct eye of authority. Then the Captain's Clerk arrived with a bundle of papers in his hand.

"All ready, Master-at-Arms?"

"All ready, sir." The iron-visaged Chief of Police saluted and went to report to the Commander. The Commander ran his eye over the defaulter-sheet and, entering the Captain's cabin, disappeared from view. For a