marine patrol and trawler patrol. We moved on the face of the waters by day and by night, without haste (except on high occasions, for coal was precious), without rest; with some of our aching eyes fixed on the far round horizon for ships, and some, still more aching, on the near wave-orests for submarines, our guns loaded, our fingers (se to speak) on the triggers.

The ceaseless watch was never interrupted, not even by the diversification due to the holding-up of ships-this latter a daily and a nightly preceeding, undertaken almost thankfully as a break in the monetony-not even by the coalings, which had to take place every eight or ten days at Madeira, under the "friendly neutrality" (which afterwards became complete alliance) of Portugal. At work at sea, or coaling in harbour, the guns remained manned, the look-outs incessantly looking out.

When the menace of submarines round Madeira became really distinct and close, we moved south: first to St Vincent, in the Cape de Verde Islands, that horrid, torrid group of wind-swept oinders; and lastly, to the even hotter, but at least verdant harbour of Sierra Leone-"the best 'ole of all," as it was defended by a boom!

The oruisers with which we started in 1914 had already, for several years, been reclining in senile decay on various scrap-heaps, or else were in gentle employment as "overflow-ships" to crowded naval

depots, training ships for stokers (though never leaving harbour), and so forth.

But, with the first trump of war, like Sam Weller's "werry old donkey," they were lugged up off their death-bed to "take sixteen gen'lemen to Greenwich on a tax-cart." Anything for air and exercise, indeed!

Oat they went at once into the broad Atlantic, and gallantly did they attempt to recover the spring of a youth now nearly twenty years behind them. After about a year of it, the first of the old ships to get away, the Amphitrite and Argonaut, were relieved, and steamed home at the very respectable speed of 16 knots; each of them having covered nearly 30,000 miles since leaving England, and each having consumed nearly 25,000 tons of coal in so doing. But when you consider that this speed could be exceeded by at least six knots by the foe we were out to catch-the Karlsrühe— and that the outranging by her guns of ours was in like proportion, you will wonder, as we did, why that particular foe, knowing these facts, did not come over to our side of the Atlantic to "take us on."

What fat eargees might not the Germans then have snatched, waddling home from the Plate and from the Cape, slow, helpless! But they kept maddeningly olear of us, and made up all their "bags" over 1000 miles away.

As to the armed merchant oruisers, the other half of our squadron, they, of course, were

the mightiest bluff of all: a fact scarcely yet comprehended, and not even dimly imagined in the autumn of 1914.

It was, indeed, the usual opinion that we had here a real, new, swift, and deadly arm-fully capable of pursuing, catching, engaging, and sinking the Karlsruhe, or any other commerce-destroyer. Piquaney was added to the position by the thought that the Merchant Navy was defending itself, and the realisation that there was something in the Royal Naval Reserve after all.

There was, indeed, as we of the White Ensign speedily discovered—and a splendid something, too; but as to their ships, we, who helped to man and "run" them on man-of-war principles, had few illusions as to their their capabilities. Our hearts were big, we were thoroughly keen for a trial; but faith in our 14,000-ton leviathans was largely tempered with hope for a happy ending to any encounter with a real oruiser constructed for fighting. There was a sporting chance, we supposed-there always is -80 "Vive le Sport!"

The Port of Liverpool, where the conversion of their most cherished and most enormous monsters into fighting ships reached its maddest height during that first month of the war, was a wonderfully thrilling sight. No one could regard all that day-and-night energy without being convinced that it must be producing some great new things; that here was the Sea Horse of Britain, taken from the peaceable ploughing

of the waves, being caparisoned for the fray, impatiently foaming at the bit, neighing, and saying "Ha, ha" among the captains (R.N.)!

Every side of every basin in the dooks held against it a vast dark hull. Overhead, in the roofs of the equally vast and dark sheds that flanked the hulls and sheltered the enormous piles of ships' stores removed from them, there looked down the brilliant and unrelenting eyes of the arc lights, cold and green. There was neither night-time, nor daytime, nor meal-time; nothing but working-time, at twentyfour hours per diem.

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Every orifice in those hulls entry - ports, coaling - ports, cargo-ports-carried a gangway from it down to the wharf; and along these there surged in both directions an intensely busy army in single file, closed up. Some hurried into the ships empty-handed; hurried out of them, bearing on their shoulders burdens of cabin-fittings, inlaid woodpanelling, china, glass, every conceivable and inconceivable article designed for the comfort of the pampered passenger, or merely for his "leok-see"-all now suddenly become useless and contemptible in the face of the real thing.

Each man's face,shining with sweat, white with sleeplessness, radiated forth that strange delight in destruction which inhabits all of us; while from within the rapidly emptying shells of the great ships there resounded on all sides the wild exciting din of demolishment

the bang, whang, crash, smash, of those who hammered, and wrenched, and levered, and forcibly unscrewed.

The work was not, however, so destructive as it sounded. Every article and every panel was marked with the name of the ship and the part of her from whence it came-even its consecutive number, as panelling. In those hopeful days we thought the things would each soon be going back again into its place! Each description of removed fittings was piled in monster pyramids, according to its class, abreast of the ship whence it had been eviscerated. The amounts of these, for any one ship, were staggering to the ordinary uncalculating mind. From the Aquitania, for example, the weight of glass-ware alone came to no less than 40 tons. (This fact, however, will carry easy belief with any one who has handled the water decanters and tumblers usual to passenger steamers.)

Upon & certain Monday evening arrived from her "trade" our ship, a luxuriously equipped hotel, soft and "oushy" at every turn, fair to see, attractively painted; her funnels in strongly contrasting glossy black and the most vermilion of fresh red-lead. "Ah," said her former Scotch captain reminiscently, later on, on regarding a coloured picture of his ship-of-peace, "Yon's a bonny funnel!"

On the following Sunday morning we left the dooks, stark and stripped, grey all over, as nearly a man-of-war

as was possible to be bluffed, white ensign and pendant complete.

Within the intervening 132 hours, the ship had been gutted of all her cabins on every deck; stripped of all panelling everywhere; eight 6-inch guns had been mounted, the ship's framework and supporting deck had been strengthened to match; and magazines and shell-rooms had been built. Besides this, stores for the ship, food for her company, her guns, and her boilers, had been hoisted in by the hundred ton-coal, indeed, by the thousand ton; officers and men had been appointed, had joined, and taken charge.

Aladdin's lamp must have begun to think about hiding its pale ineffectual fire!

A short gun-trial outside the Bar lightship, which passed us sound as regards guns and fittings: a last letter home in the mysteriously veiled language that later became so easy and expected-and we were away! The then unaccustomed secrecy as to the vessel's destination and route was interpreted in several places as meaning that we were bound to a northern port, to add one more to the troopships well known then to be engaged in hurrying thousands of Russian troops across to the north of Scotland. For, with the snow still on their beards, and the ice of Archangel in their bones (as it were, chilled beef), they had been actually seen passing southward by train through England on their way to the Front!

We were in reality bound,

it was tantalising; but while the latter feeling always remained, our compensating enjoyment of their helplessness was swallowed up in anxiety lest any one of them should make a bolt for it, and get away to join the Karlsruhe or other commerce-destroyer in the Atlantic, to bring her aid, coal, and provisions.

This anxiety was rendered even more poignant, shortly after, by the several arrivals at Santa Cruz of steamers fitted out as supply ships by the Germans in America, and sent to sea under neutral flags, one after the other. After fruitlessly scouring the Atlantic for several weeks, searching for the Karlsrühe or dodging our patrols, three of them arrived and anchored in the neutral shelter- already tautly strained -of the Canaries. It now became necessary, indeed, for the strain to be relieved somewhat; and accordingly "shelter" was converted into "internment" by the Spanish authorities (after eloquent representations, and may God guard Your Exeellencies many years!) But we kept just as close a guard. The little less, and what miles away might not these ships have been, "internment" and all!

Sixteen or seventeen of these German Fleet auxiliaries, it was discovered by the justly indignant United States authorities, had been ohartered in America. They cost Germany, to fit out, and for the suborning of the various captains and others concerned, about £400,000. Out of the whole lot only one, the Berwind,

succeeded in its mission. Of the remainder, many were prevented from so much as leaving American waters, and of those that got away some were sunk, some were captured, and the rest were detained in neutral ports. It was an expensive experiment in straining neutrality.

Besides the three so-called "neutrals" that reached our side, there was a fourth steamer on whom our straining eyes continually were fixed, named Telde. She was a genuine German, brand-new, and originally employed, under German colours, in the island fruit trade; but now, since war broke out, sheltering at Santa Cruz. She was of about 2500 tons, fast, convenient, inconspicuous; and accordingly she had been loaded with stores of all sorts, including gold in boxes-the whole discreetly coVered over with coal (her nominal "eargo"); and having been given a Spanish "clearance" for Antofagasta, in Chile, we expected her to sail at any moment. Nothing would have been easier for her, on some moonless night, than gently to slip the cable, and gently to move away, under the high dark eliffs of Teneriffe. Even had she been seen by us to be moving, she might easily have been mistaken for one of the small Spanish inter island steamers she so greatly resembled, and thus to have eluded pursuit. Close and anxious watch was therefore necessary. One still remembers the agonised and frequent moments when something put