"Hair wasn't a very important item, but they all seemed to take so much pleasure in 'coiffeuring' that I took good care not to discourage their efforts in that direction. The spirit that you enter that kind of a game in makes all the difference in the world in its success, and these lads--and, indeed, the whole lot of us--were like children playing house. All of them were blondes--even a boy born in Durban, who had more than a touch of the 'tar brush,' and one--a roly-poly young Scot, who had made himself a pair of tawny braids from rope ravellings--looked like a cross between 'Brunnhilde' and 'The Viking's Daughter.' "It was only during rehearsals, of course, that these lads were 'ladies of leisure.' The rest of the time I kept them on brass polishing and deck-scrubbing, with the result that the little old '----' regained, outwardly at least, much of her pristine ship-shapiness. The 'gentlemen friends' of the 'ladies' were even more of a 'make-ship' product than the latter. "Indeed, they were really costumes rather than individuals. I don't mean that we used dummies, but only that there were eight or ten flannel jackets and boater hats laid ready, and these were to be worn more or less indiscriminately by any of the regular crew not on watch. Their rôle was simply to loll on the quarterdeck with the 'ladies' while the U-boat was sizing us up, then to join for a few minutes in the 'panic' following the hoped-for attack, and finally to beat it to their action stations. "That a 'baby' was by far the most effective disguise for the first lance-bomb we hoped to chuck home was obvious at the outset. Both of them had heads, their general shapes (when dressed) were not dissimilar, while the 'long clothes' of the infant was found to have a real steadying effect on the missile, on the same principle that 'streamers' act to bring an air-bomb down nose-first. Of course, a child in arms, like this one was to be, wasn't just the kind of thing one would take pleasure yachting; but I knew the Huns took their nurslings to beer gardens, and thought that that might make them think that the Englanders--who were incomprehensible folk anyhow--might take this strange way of accustoming their young to the waves which they sang so loudly of ruling. "The decisive consideration, however, was the fact a baby was the only thing except a jewel-case that a panicky woman in fear of being torpedoed would stick to. As you can't get a lance-bomb in a jewel-case, it was plainly 'baby' or nothing.