For the first few days out from Wilhelmshaven the weather had been misty with heavy snowfalls, conditions enabling the mine-layer (and afterwards raider) to run the blockade and elude the network of patrols, not, however, without some very close shaves. On one occasion a large auxiliary cruiser passed in a snow squall, and during subsequent movements the raider found herself in the midst of a British fishing fleet, but passed unrecognised in the darkness. And now that she was approaching the British coast, and the scene of actual operations, the barometer again obliged by falling rapidly. It was a wild night and very dark when the first mine splashed overboard. A snowstorm set in, and as the work proceeded heavy seas broke over the vessel, smothering her with spray, but she was comparatively a large ship, built for ocean trade. Although the darkness and the snow were conditions favourable to the laying of mines in secret, and without their aid the danger of discovery would have been great, the rising gale and the heavy seas rendered the work both difficult and dangerous, notwithstanding that these deadly weapons were so arranged as to go automatically overboard. Before the last of her cargo had been consigned to the deep it was blowing great guns, and one sea after another was breaking over the ship. Although sheltered waters lay less than fifty miles distant, to proceed there would mean certain discovery and destruction, so all through that wild night, and for many hours afterwards, the raider sought by every means in her power to battle seawards, away from the coast and danger, heading into the teeth of the gale and out on to the broad bosom of the North Atlantic, all unknowing that but for the severity of the storm she must have been observed, probably in the very act of laying the mine-field, by the small warship riding out the north-wester in the more sheltered waters close inshore. * * * * * It is interesting to note that it was on this mine-field a few days later that one of the largest transatlantic liners was sunk. CHAPTER XXI THE S.O.S. A GREAT work of rescue was carried on throughout the war on all the seven seas by vessels of both the old and the new navy. This service was rendered to ally, neutral and enemy alike, but no complete record of the gallant deeds performed nor even of the numbers and nationalities of those saved will, in all probability, ever be available, and none is needed, for it was a duty which brought its own reward. Typical of the way succour was brought by the naval patrols to those unhappy victims of both sexes left adrift in open boats in calm and rough, sunshine and snow, all over the northern seas by the cowardly _Unterseeboten_ of the kultured race was the rescue of the passengers and crew of a liner off the wild west coast of Ireland in the winter of 1916. * * * * *