"Absolutely successful! Twenty-four, all told. I got right across to within ten miles of their coast." The other gave an abrupt, disconcerting laugh. "You laid them in fours, as you were ordered?" The young man nodded. "They cannot miss them. And if a ship fails to touch one direct she must cross one of the wires that connect them. The impetus of her speed will swing them aft against her side--two on each side.... Or three on one and one on the other...! Then----!" The speaker made a graceful upward gesture with his hands and smiled. "And you were not sighted?" "Once. The fog lifted a little, and one of their Light Cruisers must have seen us. But I was flying their flag----" He laughed again. "Oh, they are fools! Fools! They had time to blow us out of the water six times over before I could slip back into the fog again." The speaker lit a cigarette and moistened his dry lips. "Then I came back as quickly as possible. And now I want my supper and some beer--it's thirsty work, that--that trawling in the North Sea!" He took a Service revolver out of the side pocket of his coarse reefer jacket and extracted the cartridges from it as they walked along the deserted quay. His companion took his arm affectionately. "My dear boy," he ejaculated. "Beer! Come along! You shall have a gallon--you have earned it! Herr Gott in Himmel! You shall swim in it if you like." 2 It was the supper hour on board the Cruiser, and the "watch below" were enjoying their leisure, after the fashion of the sailor-man, along the crowded batteries. The sailor's meal, especially in war time, is a satisfying affair; but he does not linger over it as one lingers over the tea-table ashore. For one thing, the surroundings are cramped and stuffy, and the time is short; there are other needs more pressing: there is a duck jumper to be scrubbed by to-morrow perhaps; or a few more inches to be added to the wonderful patchwork quilt destined some day to be the pride and ornament of somebody's home. Besides, on deck one can smoke a pipe. The battery was thronged with men; many were sitting in pairs at a mess-kettle, up to their elbows in soap-suds; forward by the break of the forecastle the ship's barber was reaping a rich harvest of pennies--a "penny a shave and twopence hair-cut" is the recognised tariff. A sewing-machine whirred busily in the lee of a gun-shield; the crew "standing by" the gun exchanged lazy chaff with the bearded sempster. Their watch was nearly at an end, and with the prospect of a meal ahead the sailor brightens wonderfully. The ship's pet goat wandered from group to group, gravely accepting the attentions--cigarettes, banana-skins, and the like--that came his way during stand-easy. Out of the wreaths of fog and tobacco-smoke forward drifted presently the strains of an accordion----