In all its bearings, the comradely action of the _Gull_ was but a foreshadowing of _Gowan Lea's_ assistance to _Floandi_ in the raid by Austrian cruisers on the drifter line in the Adriatic. The circumstances were curiously alike--the actual occurrence, the individual deeds. We have Skipper Nichols refusing to leave until his wounded were embarked, and Engineman Mobbs groping (as Rea did) through the scalding steam of _Floandi's_ wrecked engine-room to reach the stokehold and draw the fires. Then, as in the Russians' sea-panic of October 1904, the fishermen (fighting seamen now) came under a sudden and murderous gunfire at close range. Overpowered by heavy armament, there was no flinching, no surrender. _Gowan Lea_ headed for the enemy with her one six-pounder spitting viciously. The issue was not considered--though Skipper Joseph Watt must have had no doubt that he was steering his drifter towards certain destruction. Her gun was quickly put out of action. Her funnel and wheelhouse were riddled and shot to pieces. Water made on her through shot-holes in the hull. On the gun-platform, her gunlayer struggled to repair the mechanism of the breech--his leg dangling and shattered. Shell-torn and incapable of further attack, she drifted out of the line of fire. Bad as was her own condition, there were others in worse plight. _Floandi_ had come under direct point-blank fire, and her decks were a shambles. Out of control--her main steam-pipe being shot through--seven dead or badly wounded, and only three remaining to work her, she was in dire need of assistance. Skipper Watt observed the distress of his sea-mate and steered _Gowan Lea_ down to her to offer the same brotherhood as of the _Gull_ to _Crane_. The analogy is peculiarly complete: the boarding, the succour to the wounded, the reverent handling of the dead. Not as a new spirit born of the stress of war, but as the outcome of an age-old tradition, Gowan Lea stood by.