Interruptions are many and varied on board the M.L.'s. At almost any hour of the day and night when the little craft were lying alongside the parent ship, casual visitors were apt to drop in, to say nothing of callers on more or less urgent Service matters. An officer is supposed to receive visitors with complete equanimity whether he be in the midst of shaving, dressing, having a meal, or even a bath. Privacy is practically non-existent. Almost the only exception is when the lawful occupant of the cabin is engaged in private correspondence. Hence Meredith's hurried preliminaries before replying to the noisy summons on deck. "Come in," he shouted. "Visitors are requested to leave sticks and umbrellas in charge of the hall porter--Oh, dash it all! That's my toe!" he ejaculated, as the steel-shod end of the golf club was dropped through the hatchway and fell with a dull thud upon the Sub's foot. Seizing the lethal weapon, Meredith stood up and prepared to take summary vengeance upon the lower portions of its owner, who was descending the vertical ladder leading to the diminutive ward-room of M.L. 1071. Instinctively the newcomer must have realised that reprisals were in the air, for, grasping the rim of the coaming, he dropped lightly to the floor and faced the second-in-command. "Cheerio!" exclaimed the visitor. "Where's everybody? Where's Wakefield this fine evening?" Kenneth, without replying, opened the door leading into the after-cabin and took a lengthy survey; he repeated the tactics in the galley at the for'ard end of the ward-room. Then, going on his knees, he lifted the blue baize table-cloth and peered under the swing table. "'Fraid he's not here, old man," he remarked. "Now I think of it, I believe he went on the beach at seven bells. Have a cigarette?" "Thanks.... Wakefield wasn't on the links this afternoon. Strange--very. What's his little game, Meredith? Don't tell me he went ashore in his Number Ones, with his trousers creased an' all that sort of thing! 'A wedding has been arranged and a subscription-list will follow in due course,' eh?" Jock McIntosh lit his cigarette and took stock of the ward-room, looking for evidence to confirm his suspicions of the absent Wakefield's mysterious visits "to the beach." Sub-lieutenant McIntosh and Sub-lieutenant Meredith were widely different in appearance. The former was a tall, raw-boned Scot with fair features and close-cut sandy hair that even in its closeness evinced a tendency to curl. Never cut out for a seafaring life, he found himself much against his will in the uniform of an R.N.V.R. officer, while his brother Angus, who simply loved the sea and was part-owner of a yacht and knew how to handle almost every type of small craft afloat, was given a commission in a line regiment.