disfigured us by cutting one half of the hair of our heads off and one half of the moustache, cropping close and leaving the other half on, making you as ugly as they could. . . . It was a nasty thing to do; but we made the best of it, and laughed at one another." Hardship, abuse, ridicule! The fishermen still served their trade at sea. Now, brutality! The third hand of _Boy Ernie_ details the callous precision of German methods in September 1915. The smack was unarmed. ". . . It was very heavy and deliberate fire. [There were two enemy submarines.] The shots . . . were coming on deck and going through the sails. We threw the boat overboard and tumbled into her. . . . I started sculling the boat away from the smack, all the time under fire; but the Germans were not content with firing shells at a helpless craft--they now turned a machine-gun on to defenceless fishermen in a boat on the open sea. . . . The boat was getting actually riddled by the machine-gun fire, and before I knew what was happening, I was struck by a bullet on the right thigh, and began to bleed dreadfully. . . . The smack was blown to pieces and went down. This was the work of one of the submarines--while she was sinking the smack the other was firing on us." Throughout all the malevolent and calculated campaign of destruction, the fishermen remain steadfast to their old traditions of humanity. When _Vanilla_ is torpedoed without warning and vanishes in a welter of broken gear, her sea-mate, _Fermo_, dodging a second torpedo, steams to the wreckage to rescue the survivors--but finds none. In a heavy gale, _Provident_ of Brixham risks her mast and gear, gybing to close the sinking pinnace of the torpedoed _Formidable_, and rescue the exhausted seventy-one men who crowded her. The instances of fisher help to merchantmen in peril are uncounted and uncountable.