The officer of the watch turned aside for a moment from the gyro across which he had been sighting. "I think she must be the '----,' sir," he said. "Some American millionaire had her in the Mediterranean, and, wanting to do his bit, brought her up to Portsmouth and turned her over to the Admiralty to do what they wanted with her so long as it would help to lick the Hun. She's been mixed up in several kinds of stunts, and is supposed to have a U-boat or two to her credit. Her present skipper's a Yank who came to her from a M.L. They say he's no end of a character, but right as rain on his job and with a natural nose for trouble. One of his hobbies is making his ship look what she isn't, and, in order to see her as she would appear to a U-boat, he goes out and studies her through the periscope of one of our own submarines. When one of these isn't handy, he sometimes goes out in a whaler and studies her through a stubby periscope poked over its gunwale. He got blown right out to sea one night when he was making some experiment from a whaler in 'moonlight visibility,' and didn't get back till the next morning. It had no effect on his enthusiasm, though, for he was out on the same stunt the next night. No question about his nerve, nor his luck, nor his skill, for that matter. Smart seamanship probably has as much to do with the fact that he has never been torpedoed as has his fancy camouflage." I made up my mind at once that here was a man worth meeting and hearing the story of, but as the only base he seemed to have was not easy to reach, and as his ship was reported at sea on the only occasions I was free to go there, some weeks went by before I was able to carry out my plan of paying him a visit. Then, one morning, a nondescript craft, which might have been anything from a wood-pile to a Chinese junk half a mile away, came nosing inconsequentially through the lines of the Grand Fleet and moored alongside the very battleship in which I happened to be at that time. "K---- has come in with the '----' to 'swing compasses,'" the navigating officer announced to the ward-room. "He's a 'converted side-wheel river ferry-boat' this morning, or something of the kind; and he's going to get blown to sea in a 'sudden gale,' or something of the kind; and he says that, if anyone doesn't believe it, to come aboard and he'll give 'em something to stimulate their 'stolid British imaginations.'" As certain lockers of the "----" had not been entirely looted of their age-mellowed treasure when the yacht was dismantled for sterner service than lounging about limpid Mediterranean harbours, the doubters were, naturally, many; but it is pleasant to be able to record that those who came to scoff remained--to tea. Indeed, it was not until after tea that I had a chance for a half-hour's yarn alone with K---- in the "banquet-hall-deserted" splendour of the stripped saloon. It was then that he told me how it was he chanced to "come across and get into the game."