Having said all this, you may wonder there was never a mutiny; but such a state of affairs was the last thing that could ever happen in any of Bernays’ ships. From a weak man the crew would not have stood this treatment a day, but they understood him, they respected him, they loved him, and in his command of the English tongue they realized that he was like unto themselves, but more adept. Follow him? They followed him everywhere—through the North Sea, through Russian and Irish minefields, and relied on him implicitly. And this regard was mutual, for in spite of his rugged manner Bernays had a heart, and he thought the world of his crew. I remember how pleased he was the day he was ordered to go to the dangerous Tory Island minefield. ‘But I’m not going without my old crew; they’re the very best in the world.’ Bernays, as an American officer once remarked, ‘certainly was some tough proposition,’ but he knew no cowardice; he did his brave duty, and he rests in a sailor’s grave. Another of these thirteen was the converted sloop _Begonia_, commanded by Lieut.-Commander Basil S. Noake, R.N., an officer of altogether different temperament. Keen and able, yet courteous and gentle of manner, tall, thin, and suffering somewhat from deafness, this gallant officer, too, paid the great penalty. For _Begonia_ was destined to have no ordinary career. Built as a minesweeping sloop, she carried out escort and patrol work until one day she was holed, but managed to get into Queenstown. Here she was repaired and transformed into a decoy, with a counter added instead of her cruiser stern, and with the addition of derricks and so on she was a very clever deception. During one cruise she was evidently a victim to the enemy, for she disappeared, too. The remaining ships of this thirteen were the _Acton_ (Lieut.-Commander C. N. Rolfe, R.N.), _Zylpha_ (Lieut.-Commander John K. McLeod, R.N.), _Cullist_ (Lieut.-Commander S. H. Simpson, D.S.O., R.N.), _Tamarisk_ (Lieut.-Commander John W. Williams, D.S.O., R.N.R.), _Viola_ (Lieut.-Commander F. A. Frank, D.S.O., R.N.R.), _Salvia_ (Lieut.-Commander W. Olphert, D.S.O., D.S.C., R.N.R.), _Laggan_ (Lieutenant C. J. Alexander, R.N.R.), and _Heather_ (Lieutenant Harold Auten, R.N.R.). In this list there is scarcely a name that did not receive before the end of the war at least one D.S.O., while two of them received the Victoria Cross.