"Perhaps they won't be in till after tea," suggested Betty. "Perhaps the fog has delayed them." "Perhaps," said the other. So they put tea in a Thermos flask, and bread-and-butter and a slice of cake apiece in a little basket, and climbed again to their vantage point in the lee of the peat stack. They read novels and talked in desultory snatches through the afternoon. Then they had tea and told each other about the books they were reading. But as their shadows lengthened across the blaeberry and heather, the silences grew longer, and Betty, striving to concentrate her interest on her book, found the page grow suddenly blurred and incomprehensible.... "It's getting chilly," said the elder girl at length. She rose to her feet with a little involuntary shiver, and stood for a moment staring out towards the sea. "I wonder..." she began, and her voice trailed off into silence. Betty began slowly to repack the basket. "Sometimes I pray," said Eileen Cavendish, "when I want things to happen very much. And sometimes I just hold my thumbs like a pagan. Sometimes I do both. Let's do both now." So they sat silent side by side; one held her breath and the other held her thumbs, but only the dusk crept in from the sea. CHAPTER X THE BATTLE OF THE MIST Thorogood, Lieutenant of the Afternoon Watch, climbed the ladder to the upper bridge as the bell struck the half-hour after noon. A blue worsted muffler, gift and handiwork of an aunt on the outbreak of war, enfolded his neck. He wore a pair of glasses in a case slung over one shoulder and black leather gauntlet-gloves. The Officer of the Forenoon Watch, known among his messmates as Tweedledee, was focusing the range-finder on the ship ahead of them in the line; he looked round as the new-comer appeared, and greeted him with a grin. "Hullo, James," he said. "Your afternoon watch? Well, here you are." He made a comprehensive gesture embracing the vast Fleet that was spread out over the waters as far as the eye could reach. "Divisions in line ahead, columns disposed abeam, course S.E. Speed, 15 knots. Glass low and steady. The Cruisers are ahead there, beyond the Destroyers," he nodded ahead. "But you can't see them because of the mist. The Battle-cruisers are somewhere beyond them again, with their Light Cruisers and Destroyers--about thirty miles to the southward. The hands are at dinner and all is peace. She's keeping station quite well now." The speaker moved to the range-finder again and peered into it at the next ahead. "Right to a yard, James." Thorogood nodded. "Thank you: I hope I'll succeed in keeping her there. Any news?" "News?" The other laughed. "What about?" "Well," replied Thorogood, "the perishing Hun, let's say." The Navigator, thoughtfully biting the end of a pencil, came out of the chart-house with a note-book in his hand, in which he had been working out the noon reckoning.