Vessel after vessel was reported sunk by mine contact, including the new leviathan, H.M.S. _Audacious_, which awful disaster was religiously hushed up and kept away from the ken of the English nation. American papers, however, exhibited photos of the wreck and rescues which were freely copied by international journals, whilst Germany knew all about it from the first. The third fleet of mine-sweepers, eventually sent to Tory Island with instructions to sweep the same area as at first directed but at a greater depth, gathered in about 120 to 130 large mines out of the 150 said to have been sown there. But this was after far too many casualties had been reported, and much shipping, with valuable lives, had been lost to Great Britain. Although at times I am notoriously loquacious, I can also be a deep thinker. Sometimes when alone during those dark days in the solitude of deep forests, or perched upon some bleak promontory jutting out into northern seas and watching over the angry waters beneath me, I would sit for hours lost in meditation turning over in my mind again and again passing events, weighing the possibilities, probabilities, alleged diplomatic mistakes and indiscretions; social upheavals, labour strikes, absurd optimism of a section of the Press; false security created by too rigid censorship; political dangers from continued vote-angling and pandering to obvious German agitation amongst workmen and miners; continued short-sighted political revenge upon English landowners for the suppression rather than encouragement of any increased user of the land towards food production; contradictions which were irreconcilable; on the one hand enormous and useless expenditures, on the other unparalleled meanness and littleness; the clinging to fatal fallacies by refusing conscription; the insistence with which old and admittedly absolutely incompetent officials were kept in office; refusals to find places--even honorary ones--for admittedly first-class younger volunteers from our colonies; muddle upon muddle; waste upon waste; mistake upon mistake; yet the glorious gallantry and irrepressible loyalty and patriotism of Britisher units and her allies on land and sea seemed to be pulling everything through. Having regard to the thirty years' preparation of Germany and the utter unpreparedness of England, a miracle seemed in the process of evolution. Would the nations involved cease their strife owing to absolute exhaustion and attrition? Would the Entente eventually achieve full consummation of its hopes, so devoutly to be wished? Or was the sequel foreshadowed by the late Lord Tennyson: "Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end? Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend; Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past, Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last." CHAPTER VI DEPOSING A RIVAL