"Oh, a--ll right! Needn't make a song and dance of it! North, --ty-four east? Right!" Picking up binoculars, the Second scans the black of it ahead, as though now definitely set for business. The watch is taken over and all seems settled, but the Third is not yet completely happy. He gloats a while over the Second's gloomy outlook, and yawns in that irritating _arpeggio_, the foretaste of a good sound sleep. "Oh, d'ya read in orders 'bout th' zigzag for th' morning watch?--a new stunt, fours and sixes; start in at----" "Oh, g'rr out! How can a man keep a watch, you chewin' th' rag? Yes, I--read--the orders!" _S-snap!_ "_Huh!_ A pair of them!" It comes to us that something will have to be said about the way the damned bridge is relieved in this ship! Into the chart-room, to fumble awkwardly for light ('_T'tt!_ That switch out of order again!') and search for a portent in the jeering glassy face of the aneroid. _Tip, tip, whap!_ The cursed thing is falling still. 'Twenty-nine owe two--half an inch since ten o'clock! Whatever can be behind all this? That damn glass was never right, anyway!' [Illustration: THE BOWS OF THE _KASHMIR_ DAMAGED BY COLLISION] Drumming of the wireless-cabin telephone sounds out, and we listen to a brief account of Poldhu's war warning. An S.O.S. has been heard, but a shore station has accepted it. (They can identify the ship--might be the harping of a Fritz.) There is a long code message through, and the quartermaster brings it--a jumble of helplessly ugly consonants that looks as though the German Fleet, at last, is out--but resolves (after a wearisome cryptic wrestle) to back-chat that has little of interest for us. Poldhu has the reports of the day--mines and derelicts, wreckage, the patrols, and enemy submarines in the channels. Chart work for a while. The wrecks and the derelicts are figured and placed, and we dally with the subs, plotting and measuring to find a clue to their movements. 'Fifteen hours at six, and ten to come or go! _Mmm!_ That 'll be the same swine working to the nor'east. Hope he makes a good course into the minefield! This one is solo--and that! A ghastly bunch, anyway!' We project a line of our course, but hesitate at position. 'Not one decent observation in the last three days. Only a muggy guess at a horizon. Dead-reckoning? Of course, there is our dead-reckoning, but--but--wonder where the commodore got his position from? Must have added on th' day of th' month, or fingers and toes or something! Damned if we can see how, at twelve knots, we could be where----' The outspread chart, glaring white under the electric light, with a maze of heights and soundings, grows strangely indistinct, and it calls for an effort to set the counts and figures in their places. We realize that wandering thought and a warm chart-room are not the combination for wakefulness. So, on deck again, to steady up at the doorway and wonder why the night has become suddenly as hellish black as the pit!