"Tough customer," remarked Wakefield. "His nickname is well bestowed. I shouldn't care to fall foul of him." "A good man for the job, I should imagine," said Meredith, as he proffered his cigarette-case to his superior officer. "Where the Navy would be without the R.N.R. goodness only knows. Those fellows could carry on straight away, but we had to be trained--after a fashion. I remember the first time I tried to bring an M.L. alongside a jetty. There wasn't much tide and hardly any wind, but it took five attempts before I did the trick." "You were not the only one," said Wakefield reminiscently. "First time I was running at fifteen knots I had the wind up properly. Knew every article on the Rule of Road and all that sort of thing by heart, but the first lumbering old tramp I met drove the whole blessed lot out of my head. Scraped her quarter by less'n a yard, an' it might have been worse." Kenneth puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. "Rummy war this," he observed. "When you take things into consideration----" "Fog's cleared away, and it's a bright moonlight night," announced Morpeth, thrusting his head, surmounted by the salt-stained cap and tarnished badge, through the doorway. "Care to come up and have a look round?" "Right-o, old thing," replied Wakefield. Preceded by their host, the M.L. officers ascended the almost vertical steel ladder and gained the deck. "Mind our tram-lines," cautioned Morpeth, "That's right. Now, what do you think of the old hooker?" CHAPTER VII A U-BOAT OF SORTS THE "old hooker" was plugging along at a steady twelve knots. At frequent intervals copious quantities of spray would be flung inboard as her bows plunged into the long swell. Running dead into the eye of the wind, she gave one an exaggerated idea of speed, for even in a light breeze the wire rigging supporting the two short masts verberated tunefully in the night air. From the partly closed fo'c'sle hatchway came sounds of mild revelry. Meredith smiled at the noise, for he recognised amongst others the voices of some of his own men. Evidently the ex-crew of M.L. 1071 were taking kindly to their new surroundings, and were not in the least perturbed by their change of fortune. "Hefty sort of hooker after an M.L." remarked Wakefield. "And what did you tell me was her name?" "I didn't tell you any name, for the simple reason that she hasn't one. She's simply Q 171, while to Fritz she appears as U 251--but Fritz doesn't get away to tell the tale." "What are these for?" asked Kenneth, kicking his boot against one of a pair of metal rails that ran fore and aft. "Our tram-lines," explained the lieutenant-commander of Q 171. "A little device to clear decks for action in a brace of shakes. See our conning-tower and that superstructure arrangement abaft it? They're duds. Stand aside a minute, and I'll give a little demonstration of how things are worked. A bit further--that's it; now you are clear of the rails. Jackson!" "Sir!"