Even in harbour, when her officers and men were endeavouring to obtain a little well-earned sleep, she sometimes had an exasperating habit of rolling her rails under and slopping the water over her deck, and then it was that Langdon, her lieutenant in command, wedged in the bunk in his little cabin in the stern, and driven nearly frantic by the irregular thump, thump, crash of the loosely hung rudder swinging from side to side as the ship rolled, rose in his wrath and cursed the day he was born. But whatever he thought in his heart of hearts, he would not hear a bad word against his old _Rapier_ in public. She might be ancient; but then she had done "a jolly sight more steaming" than any other craft of her age and class. She might burn coal in her furnaces instead of oil-fuel, and every ounce of coal had to be shovelled on board from a collier by manual labour, whereas, in an oil-driven destroyer, one simply went alongside a jetty or an "oiler," connected up a hose, and went to bed while a pump did all the work. But Langdon never could endure "the ghastly stink" of crude petroleum, while coal, though dirty, was clean dirt. The _Rapier_ might have old-fashioned engines, but with them one ran no chance of developing that affliction of turbine craft: water in the casing, the consequent stripping of blades off the turbine rotors, and a month or so in a dockyard as a natural concomitant. Moreover, everybody knew that destroyers with reciprocating engines were far and away the easiest to handle. So, from what Langdon said, though it is true that he may have been rather prejudiced by the fact that she was his first independent command, the fifteen-year-old _Rapier_ was a jewel of fair price. The powers that be perhaps did not regard her with such rose-tinted optimism, but for all that, were evidently of the opinion that she was still capable of useful work, and kept her constantly at sea accordingly. Exactly what her function was I had better not say, but she always seemed to be on the spot when things happened, and had assisted at the "strafing" of Hun submarines, and had been under fire a great many more times than some of her younger sisters, many of whom were craft at least three times her size, eight knots more speed, and infinitely better armed and more seaworthy. So it was not to be imagined that the _Rapier_, ancient though she was, suffered from senile decay. * * * * * "Curse this weather," the Lieutenant muttered, wrinkling his eyes in a vain endeavour to see through the murk. "We've been forty-eight hours on patrol, and now we're due to go into harbour this beastly fog comes down and delays us. It IS the limit!"