The boarding party returned to the cabin and commenced the objectionable task of extricating the dead body from the mass of wreckage. The work proceeded slowly, for the heavy broken timbers pressed mercilessly on the object beneath, and when at last it lay revealed in the dim lantern light its ghastly appearance caused all to step back in horror. It was a headless corpse! CHAPTER XVII MINED-IN HOW many people realise that, with a single unimportant exception, there was no part of the English or Scottish coast which was not mined-in at least once by German submarines during 1914-1918? Harbour entrances, often less than two miles from the shore, were repeatedly blocked by lines of hostile mines, laid by U-C boats through their stern tubes, in which they seldom carried less than fifteen to twenty of these deadly weapons, without the vessels rising to the surface either when approaching the coast, laying the mines or effecting their escape. Many important waterways, such as the Straits of Dover, the mouth of the Thames, the approaches to Liverpool, the Firth of Forth, Aberdeen, Lowestoft and Portsmouth, were repeatedly chosen for this form of submarine attack. At one base alone no less than 400 mines were destroyed by the attached anti-submarine flotillas in one year, and round the coasts of the United Kingdom an average of about 3000 of these invisible weapons were located and destroyed annually. What this meant to the 24,000,000 tons of mercantile shipping passing to and fro through the danger zone _every month_ will be better realised when it is stated that less than 400 merchant ships were blown up by mines during the three years of intensive submarine warfare. The losses among the minesweeping and patrol flotillas, which were mainly responsible for the crushing defeat of this piratical campaign, were, however, very heavy. They amounted to over 200 ships and several thousand men. Few will therefore deny to those who lived and to those who died a share in the glory of the great victory. Statistics make but uninteresting reading, and from the following account of what happened off a big Scottish seaport while the inhabitants ashore slept in peace and safety a better idea will be obtained of the arduous nature of the work of minesweeping and patrol in time of war than could possibly be imparted by pages of figures. * * * * * The early dusk of a winter evening was settling over a white land and a leaden sea. A mist of sliding snow increased the gloom and blotted out the vessels ahead and astern as the line of patrol boats left the comparative warmth and security of one of the largest northern harbours for twelve hours in the bitter frost on night patrol.