AN earlier chapter described the periodical overhauls necessary to keep the ships of the hard-worked auxiliary navy in proper fighting condition. These "refits" were needed not only by the ships but also by the men who worked them. They came about once a year and lasted for two or three weeks, during which time the crews were able to go home for at least a few days of much-needed rest. To describe how everyone, from commander to signal-boy, looked forward to these spells of leave is unnecessary. Let the reader imagine how he himself would feel after nine or ten months of the monotony and danger, to say nothing of the hardships, of life at sea in time of war. There was, however, another consideration, one seldom referred to but nevertheless unavoidably present in the minds of all. Each time a refit came round there were ships which would never be docked again, and comrades who had missed their leave. Men told themselves that the luck they had enjoyed for so long could not last, and it is about one of these, in a fight against overwhelming odds, that the following story deals. Three of his Majesty's armed trawlers were plunging through the sea on their lonely beat in the Western Ocean. The Hebrides lay far to the southward, and less than two days' steam ahead lay the Arctic Circle. These cheerless surroundings, however, found no echo in the hearts of the watch below on the leading ship of the unit, who were lounging on the settees in the oil-smelling fo'c'sle discussing their prospects of long leave, for their ship was to "blow-down" for a thorough refit when they returned to harbour in less than three weeks' time. On the deck of the same vessel two officers, standing in the shelter of the wheel-house, were sweating and shivering in patches, but also happy with the thought of the forthcoming reunion with their families and the brief enjoyment of the comforts of home after seven long winter months' wandering, with soul-destroying monotony, over the windswept wastes of England's frontier. The watch on deck, with the exception of the helmsman and look-out, crouched under the lee of the iron superstructure, alternately swinging their arms and stamping their heavily booted feet, but they too were mentally impervious to the dismal surroundings. Of the second ship in the line the same cheery story cannot be told. She was jealous of the first. It would be another two months at least before she would go in dock for refit; and among the watch below there were three new hands on their first voyage, two of whom would, just then, have preferred the peace and stillness of the sea bottom to the friskiness of the surface. The third trawler was a happy little ship, for although the junior of the unit she had been very fortunate in securing a "Fritz" all to her own cheek less than three months before.