If room is scanty, the convoy office has at least an atmosphere in keeping with its mission. Nestling close under the steep brow of the harbour-master's look-out, it was, in happier days, the life-boat coxswain's dwelling, and a constant reminder of sea-menace and emergency almost blocks the door--the long boat-house and launch-ways of the life-boat. Four square and solid, the little house only has windows overlooking the bay, as if attending strictly to affairs at sea and having no eyes for landward doings; the peering eaves face straight out towards the 'gateships' as though even the stone and lime were intent on the sailing of the convoys, whose order and formation are arranged within their walls. The upper room has a desk or two, a telephone, a chart table, and a typewriter, and here the port convoy officer and his assistants trim and index and arrange the ships in order of their sailing. At the window a seaman-writer is typing out 'pictures' for the next sailing--signal tables, formation and dispersal diagrams, call signs, zigzags, constantly impressing that Greenwich Mean Time is the thing (no Summer Time at sea), and that courses are True, _not_ Magnetic. The clack and release of his machine seem quite a part of conversation between the convoy officer and his lieutenant; the whole is so apparently disjointed in references to this ship and that, to repairs and tides, and shortage of 'hands' and water-supply and turns in the hawse, and even Spanish influenza! To one accustomed to single-ship work the whole is mildly bewildering, and one readily understands that sailing a merchant convoy calls for more than the simple word of command. "_War Trident_, nine knots," reads the junior, from a signal slip. "_Marmion_, a doubtful starter--steering-gear disabled. _Pearl Shell_, three stokehold hands short." "_Trident_ only nine! That be damned for a yarn!" says his senior, reaching for the slip. "Nine will reduce the speed of the whole convoy a knot. She must be good for more--new ship, isn't she?" "Yes. One of these new standards--built for eleven knots and chocked up afterwards with fancy gear and 'gadjets' to rob the boilers." "Lemme see--nine knots"--turning to the pages of a tide-book, the convoy officer makes a rough sum of it. "High water at Oysterpool--so--arrived here--distance--and seventy-one. Why, he's come on from Oysterpool at ten, no less, and that's not allowing for the zigzag either!"