Handled skilfully the destroyer crept alongside the motionless boat, and presently those on the bridge looked directly down upon it. It lay, floating on even keel, not more than six or seven feet off the starboard side, and was held up by its tanks. A red flannel shirt hung soggily against an upright pole, and coloured the shaft with the drippings of its dye. The interior of the boat was but a deep puddle, a dark puddle into which the rain fell monotonous and implacable. Floating face down and side by side in the water lay the fully clothed bodies of two men, whilst at the stern, sitting on a seat just under water, with his feet in the water and his body toppled over on the gunwale, could be seen a third figure dressed in a kind of seaman's jacket. The wet cloth of his trousers clung lightly to his thin legs and revealed the taut muscles of his thighs. Then boat hooks fished out from the side of the destroyer and drew the heavy craft in. A sailor cried out that all were dead. "Any name on the boat, Hardy?" asked the officer standing by. "No, sir." "Very well. Cast off!" The life boat, watched by some rather horrified eyes, slid alongside the destroyers, and drifted solemnly behind. "Now," said the captain, who had come on deck, "I want one tidy shot put into that boat, Butler." Ten seconds later, the roar of the four-inch at the stern burst asunder the murmur of the rain, and the watchers saw the boat of the dead crumple and disappear in the loneliness and rain. XVII "CONSOLIDATION, NOT COÖPERATION" Talking one day with an English member of the House of Commons, I asked him what he held to be the most important result of American intervention. "The spirit of coöperation which you have stirred up among the Allies," he answered. "Not that I mean to say that the Allies were continually quarrelling among themselves; the manner in which Britain has shared her ships with other hard pressed nations would refute any such insinuation, but not until you came on the scene was there a really scientific attempt at the coördination of our various forces. You were quite right to insist on a generalissimo. But of course the great lesson you've given us has been through your Navy. There's been nothing like it in the history of the allied forces. What an extraordinary position Admiral Sims has won in England! His influence is perfectly tremendous; there isn't another allied leader who has a tithe of his power. I really do not think that there is a parallel to it in English history."