The pilots of the seaplanes were rapidly swallowing an early breakfast—it is one of the outstanding disadvantages of war that one has to eat and fight at times altogether repellent to the digestion—or else, with conscientious mechanics, were giving their engines a final test, as the familiar roar of the gnomes echoing from the carriers plainly told us. But ere long the optimists proved themselves the truer prophets, for by 7 A.M. or so the mist was perceptibly thinner, and the flagship signalled the course which would bring us to our exact destination. Stationed on each side of us as a submarine screen were divisions of destroyers, whilst the seaplane carriers, hauling out of line, formed up separately with their own destroyer escort. At about 7.45 the preparatory signal flew from the flagship’s masthead, and with all hands at the guns we stood by, whilst the seaplane carriers prepared to hoist out their machines. But, alas for the aspirations of man, at this very moment a thick bank of fog gathered ahead of us, and in less than five minutes the squadron was enveloped in a ‘pea-soup’ fog, hiding ship from ship as effectively as if a cloud of poison gas had been launched at us. Flying was definitely off, but only to be replaced by another game, for we were now steaming twenty knots direct at Germany, and it would ill befit the pride of the British Navy if a squadron of her daisiest ships stranded helplessly on the Hun coast. But here was a problem. Before you turn a squadron the amount of the turn must be indicated to all ships; yet here visual signals were impossible—they would not have been visual in such a fog; syren signals were inadvisable on account of their noisy advertisement, and also the process of sound signalling is very slow; a wireless signal was an alternative, and was the quickest and surest way, but it was a way very liable to inform the enemy as to our whereabouts, for an English wireless call is as different to a German one as a gentleman to a Hun, so that any signal we made would be easily picked up by adjacent enemy stations, and the ‘strength’ of the signals would tell them how close we were. War, however, is a succession of risks, and since the need demanded, the signal was made. (One hopes it caused a flutter in the German dovecots.) The leading ships turned a right angle to starboard by two successive turns of four points, the rest of the squadron followed in their wake, and for a few minutes we ran parallel to the coast; the same signals and manœuvre repeated, and we had reversed our original course, and were steaming seawards with our stems to Germany.