"In the first year of the war we used to let off guns at periscopes and the wash of conning towers every few days in the Firth, and the very enterprising U-boat to which they were supposed to belong came to be known by the nickname of the _Pentland Pincher_. Before very long, however, we learned that the supposed periscopes were only the necks of swimming cormorants, and the 'conning tower washes' certain characteristic little humps of Pentlandesque waves. We also learned--in one way or another--that a U-boat would have about as much chance of running submerged through one of those googly tide-rips as it would have of ascending the Thames to London, while for it to go down and try to rest on the bottom would be about like a Zeppelin trying to come to roost among the splintered peaks of the Dolomites. Indeed, the best way for you to visualise the bottom of Pentland Firth is to think how the Bernese Oberland looks from the summit of the Matterhorn. It is the currents of the Atlantic and the North Sea rendezvousing over such a bottom which makes the Pentland Firth what is probably the most temperamental bit of water in the Seven Seas." With scarcely a motion, save the quiet insistent urge of the spinning turbines--something sensed rather than felt, save in the after part of the ship--we ploughed on into a night that required small effort to fancy as filched from a Mediterranean April or a North Pacific June. The breeze--no more than a zephyr purring contentedly over our starboard quarter--was redolent with the "landsy" smell of the North Scottish hills, and the indolent ebony billow heaving in from the North Sea had just enough energy to rise with a friendly swish and blink blandly up at us through the "eye-holes" of the hawse-pipes. "We're watching you," those transient foam flashes seemed to signal, "but we're not going to try to do anything to disturb you, leastways not to-night. Might just as well make a stand-easy of your watch." It must have been the almost tropical mildness of the night which turned the Admiral's mind, after he had rejoined us on the bridge, back to his days in the South Seas. Leaning lightly on the rail, and with only an occasional step aside for a squint at the soft round glow of the binnacle, or a swift glance to where barely discernible flashes of white revealed the bow-wave and wake of a screening destroyer, he spoke of the stirring events of ninety-nine when, commanding H.M.S. _Porpoise_, and weeks away from the nearest cable, he had co-operated with the American naval forces there in an endeavour to save the Samoas from the grip of a far extended tentacle of the German octopus, already stirring in its slime and reaching outwards to fasten its hold upon any of the desperately desired "sun-places" its suckers might encounter.