"It was aboot daylicht when we pickit up a' that was left o' the crew o' the _Killarney_, and aboot an hour efter we fell in wi' the _Sportsman_, wha passed us a hawser and tried to tow, stern-first, what was left o' the _Seagull_. Ah didna see what was wrang, but they tellt me that the wreck o' the stern and the helm bein' jammed hard a-sta'bo'd made sae much drag that the cable partit. Then there was naithing else to do--sin' the _Seagull_ cudna steam--but to sink her wi' gun-fire. The captain askit permission for this by W.T., and when it came they ditched the books and signals, transferred abody to the _Sportsman_, and then gae her a roun' or twa at the water-line wi' the _Sportsman's_ guns. Doon she gaed, and that," he concluded with a grin, "is the true yarn o' the sinkin' o' the _Seagull_. If only o' ma mates try to mak' ye b'lieve that she foundert 'count o' bein' hit and holed by a 'human proj' kent as Jock Campbell, I'm hopin' ye'll no listen to 'em." CHAPTER II "FIREBRAND" It was a little incident which occurred one night when the Grand Fleet was returning to Base from one of its periodical sweeps through the North Sea that set Able-seaman Melton talking of the things he had seen and felt and heard the time he was standing anti-submarine watch in the _Firebrand_, when her flotilla of destroyers mixed itself up with a squadron of German cruisers in the course of the "dog-fight" which concluded the battle of Jutland. I had found him, muffled to the eyes and dancing a jangling jig on a sleet-slippery steel plate to keep warm, when I picked my precarious way along the coco-matted deck and climbed up to the after searchlight platform of the Flotilla Leader I chanced to be in at the time. A fairly decent day was turning into a dirty night, and the steadily thickening mistiness which accompanied a sodden rain in process of transformation into soft snow had reduced the visibility to a point where the Commander-in-Chief deemed it safer for the Fleet to put back to open sea and take no further chances among the treacherous currents and rocky islands that beset the approaches to the Northern Base.