It is too late. We are lucky to be picked up at all, for it is against regulations. The row-boat goes back to the little grey motor-launch which is protecting the monitor with a smoke-screen, and must go on at once. We are pulled on board. An anxious-eyed and evidently very busy naval officer comes to me. "Are you wounded or anything?" he asks. "No? Good! I am so sorry we cannot wait to look for the other man. Go down to our cabin and get into blankets. I will send some whisky down! That noise? No! It's not the monitor. It is fifteen-inch shrapnel shell being fired at us from Ostend!" "Where are you going--anywhere near Dunkerque?" I ask. "Yes! Going back now with the monitor! The stunt's washed out--bad weather!" "_Washed out!_ All wasted, all wasted. Oh! Roy! Roy!" I crawl down a ladder and slowly, painfully, take off my heavy flying clothes. In a pool of water they lie on the floor, a sodden heap of leather and fur. Looking in the glass, I see an unfamiliar distorted face with a great enormous cheek, and wet hair plastered about the forehead. Luckily the other man is not touched or damaged, and has been scarcely even wet, so he lies more or less at ease in his bunk. This is his first raid. He seems to assume that this terrible calamity is more or less a normal occurrence. Soon I am lying in blankets with a glass of whisky inside me. The mad panorama of the night goes rushing through my brain in ever-changing vivid scenes. "Purvis! Are you awake?" I call to the bunk on the opposite side. "Yes!" "I say, you know--we are very very lucky. We have escaped every kind of death in a few seconds. If I were you I would say a prayer or two!" "I have, old man!" "Say one for Roy too, won't you. Poor Roy--he was great! He never said a word of fear to the last. He never lost his head or anything!" So in pain of body and mind I toss and turn in the little cabin with its swinging light, and hear the throb of the motor start and stop, increase and lessen, through long hours, till, for a while, I drift into an uneasy sleep.... _Zoop! Zoop!_ Suddenly sounds the old familiar sound of Mournful Mary bellowing with fear. _Boom!_ sounds a loud explosion. I sit up in my blankets and shout across to the other bunk. "Mournful Mary! We must be back." "I say, old man! Hear that? It's Leugenboom firing! I can't stand 15-inch shells on the docks this morning--let's get up and dress!"