All through my porridge and eggs and bacon the steady tramp of the barrow-men on the forecastle-deck throbbed along the steel plates of the wardroom ceiling, and it must have been about the time I was spreading my marmalade (real marmalade, not the synthetic substitute one comes face to face with ashore these days) that I seemed to sense a quickening of the movement, not through any rush-bang acceleration, but rather through gradually becoming aware of increased force in action, as when the engines of a steamer speed up from "half" to "full." In a few moments an overalled figure, with a face coal-dusted till it looked like the face of the end-man in a minstrel show, lounged in to remark casually behind the day before yesterday morning's paper that we had just gone on "two hours' notice." A half-hour later, as the gouged-out collier edged jerkily away under the impulse of her half-submerged screw, the commander, a gleam of quiet satisfaction in his steady eyes, remarked that "it wasn't such a bad finish, after all," adding that "the men seemed keen to get her out to sea and let the wind blow through her." The ship's post-coaling clean up--usually as elaborate an affair as a Turkish bath, with rub down and massage--was no more than a douche with "a lick and a promise." Anything more for a warship putting off into the North Sea in midwinter would be about as superfluous as for a man to wash his face and comb his hair before taking a plunge in the surf. Once that perfunctory wash-down was over, all traces of rush disappeared. What little remained to be done after that--even including getting ready for action--was so ordered and endlessly rehearsed that nothing short of an enemy salvo or a sea heavy enough to carry away something of importance need be productive of a really hurried movement. Just a shade more smoke from the funnels to indicate the firing of furnaces which had been lying cold, and the taking down or in of a few little harbour "comforts" like stove-pipes and gangways, forecasted imminent departure.