And now, with the paying off of the ship, they would be scattered. True, they were going home, but the fact remained that some would "go on the beach" for the last time. Officers still in their prime would have to be compulsorily retired to rot ashore, because a conference in America has agreed that there is no longer any necessity for Britannia to rule the waves. For similar reasons junior officers, on the threshold of what had promised to be a long and honourable career, were being politely invited to resign their commissions, the invitation being backed by a hint that if they did not they would be ultimately "fired" as being surplus to the revised establishment. Amongst the latter was Acting Sub-lieutenant Peter Corbold, a tall, broad-shouldered youth of nineteen or twenty. The only son of a country clergyman, Peter had been maintained at Dartmouth at a sacrifice that had played havoc with his father's meagre stipend; but, by dint of the strictest economy, the latter had seen his son through the earlier stages of his naval career, until Peter was in a measure self-supporting. Studious by nature and conscientious in carrying out his duties, Peter Corbold not only passed the successive examinations required by the Admiralty during his midshipman days, but gained high praise in his captain's reports. In due course, he obtained acting rank of sub-lieutenant and was expecting to be confirmed as such when there came a bombshell in the form of an official memorandum on the reduction of _personnel_. It was not a pleasing prospect. Its nearness became painfully apparent as the _Baffin_ approached her home port. In other circumstances, Peter might have looked ahead and fancied himself in command of a destroyer, a light cruiser, or even a battleship, gliding between those chequered circular forts that rise like gigantic inverted buckets from the floor of the anchorage of Spithead. Now that dream was shattered. There remained but the prospect of "the beach", with a meagre gratuity as a sorry solace for his compulsory abandonment of a naval career. A deeply-laden Thames barge, beating up on a weather-going tide against a stiff sou'westerly breeze, attracted his attention. Sailing-craft of all sorts and sizes had a fascination for him, and this bluff-browed craft, with her dull-red sprit-mainsail and topsail straining in the wind, made a striking picture as the foam-flecked waves swept completely over her battened-down hatches. The only visible member of her crew was a tubby, blue-jerseyed man, wearing a billycock hat, who stood with legs planted firmly apart at the wheel, happy in the knowledge that the "brass-bound blighters" on the cruiser would have to alter helm--not he. "Hello, old son!" exclaimed a voice, as a hand descended heavily on Peter's shoulder. "How would that job suit?... Hang it all, man; sorry, I didn't mean that. I forgot."