After getting away we had a hurried call-over and found that a Cockney fireman was missing. We hailed the ship which seemed about to take the plunge any minute, and at last the stoker appeared, spotlessly clean and dressed in "ducks." He had to jump and swim for it. As we hauled him to our boat we asked him why he had waited to clean himself. "Well," he explained, "if I am going to hell there's no need to let the blighter know I'm a stoker."--_Wm. C. Barnaby (late Chief Coxswain, R.N.), 7 Seville Street, Knightsbridge, S.W.1._ Accounts Rendered The First-Lieutenant of a warship I was in, though a first-class sailor, had no great liking for clerical work, consequently the ship's store-books were perhaps not quite as they should have been. [Illustration: "Well, _that_ clears up those blessed accounts anyhow."] He therefore got an Able Seaman (who had been a London clerk in civil life) to give him a hand in his "off watches" in putting the books in order. Shortly afterwards the ship stopped a torpedo and sank in eight minutes. Before the First-Lieutenant had very much time to look round he found himself in the "ditch." As he was clambering out of the water on to the bottom of an upturned boat, he saw his "Chief Accountant" climbing up the other side, and the first thing he did was to reach out and shake hands with the A.B. across the keel of the boat, at the same time remarking, "Well, _that_ clears up those blessed accounts anyhow."--_John Bowman (Able Seaman, R.N.V.R.), 19 Handel Mansions, W.C.1._ An Ocean Greyhound On one occasion when the _Diligence_ was "somewhere in the North Sea," shore leave was granted. One of the sailors, a Cockney, returned to the ship with his jumper "rather swollen." The officer of the watch noticed something furry sticking out of the bottom of his jumper, and at once asked where he had got it from, fearing, probably, that he had been poaching. [Illustration: "... To Nurse it Back to 'Ealth and Strength."] The Cockney thought furiously for a moment and then said: "I chased it round the Church Army hut, sir, until it got giddy and fell over, and so I picked it up and brought it aboard to nurse it back to 'ealth and strength."--_J. S. Cowland, 65 Tylney Road, Forest Gate, E.7._ Margate In Mespot. October 29, 1914--England declares war on Turkey and transports laden with troops sail from Bombay. One evening, within a week, these transports anchor off the flat Mesopotamian coast at the top of the Persian Gulf. In one ship, a county regiment (95 per cent. countrymen, the remainder Cockney) is ordered to be the first to land. H.M.S. _Ocean_ sends her cutters and lifeboats, and into these tumble the platoons at dusk, to be rowed across a shallow "bar." [Illustration: "Wot price this fer Margate?"] Under cover of an inky darkness they arrive close to the beach by midnight. It is very cold, and all feel it the more because the kit worn is shorts and light khaki shirts.