"Stand by to slip from the buoy," said the Gunner, and made for the hatchway. But the First Lieutenant was before him, bareheaded, cramming his Christmas mail into his pocket as he swung himself up the iron rungs of the ladder. 2 The Commander, who had been standing peering through his glasses for the last five minutes, lowered them suddenly and glanced at the chart clamped on the bracket beside him. His First Lieutenant continued to stare across the grey sea to the north-west. Day was dawning, and the spray, flung from the reeling bows of the Destroyer, was like a frozen whip-lash on their faces. "Yes, that's them," he said, in a grimly ungrammatical undertone. To the naked eye nothing was visible above the ragged skyline, but every man on the bridge was standing gazing intently in the same direction, as if the wind carried with it the scent of the quarry they sought. The Commander gave an order to the Signalman standing attentive beside the daylight searchlight, and immediately the shutters broke into a chattering "View halloa!" A blink answered on the instant, where, two cables astern, the second boat in the line followed in the heaving wake. Out of the faint haze of smoke that almost screened the rest of the division from view, one after the other the answers flickered, and then the leader spoke. The lights all blinked back together. "Signal passed, sir!" said the Yeoman. "Right," replied the Commander. He bent over the chart again for an instant, and straightening, gave an order to the wheel. The leader's bows leaped at a charging sea, rose shuddering, and fell away from the wind a couple of points; the drone of the turbines below took on a different, higher note. The Commander turned and glanced along the upper deck with a little grim smile above the turns of his worsted muffler. The Destroyer was stripped for the fight, and at the mid-ship and after guns the crews were blowing on their hands and jesting amongst themselves. The Gunner sat astride the torpedo tube glancing along the sights as the twin tubes trained slowly round like ponderous accusing fingers. "Your brother ain't going to be long unavenged," said the Commander to his First Lieutenant, as the latter climbed into the fire-control position. "We've caught this party cold!" The First Lieutenant nodded, unsmiling, as he turned away. "We'll sink the lot," he said. "But that's too good a death for a Hun. The sea's too clean to drown 'em in. I'd----" He checked the sentence and busied himself about his fire-control instruments. Then out of the north-west came a stutter of light. It winked suspiciously, and the Commander laughed, with his hand on the fire-gong key.