M.L. 1071, one of the fifteen motor launches belonging to the Auldhaig Patrol, was lying next but one alongside the parent ship _Hesperus_, an obsolete second-class cruiser. It was early in May. Already the northern evenings were drawing out and the nights becoming shorter and shorter. In the land-locked firth the lofty serrated hills were capped with fleecy mists that threatened with the going down of the sun to steal lower and lower and envelop the placid water in a pall of baffling fog. "The main object of my visit this evening," remarked McIntosh ponderously--he was rather prone to verbosity--"is to enlist your assistance in the matter of this mashie." "I thought it was a patent lead-swinging device," interposed Meredith drily--"a sort of means of getting me on the sick-list with a pulverised instep." "Not at all, laddie," continued Jock, unruffled by the interruption. "D'ye ken, I'm no hand at splicing, and I'm not giving myself away by asking any of my merry wreckers to take on the job. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to do it to-morrow." "When do you want this instrument of torture?" asked Meredith, as he examined the fractured ends. "By three on Wednesday afternoon," replied McIntosh. Kenneth shook his head. "Can't be done, old son--that is, if you want me to tackle it to-morrow." "Why not?" "'Cause I'm on patrol to-night." A terrible reverberation as the engine-room staff gave a preliminary run with the powerful motors corroborated Meredith's statement. "But I'll do it now, if you like," he added. "You might ask Coles to bring along some seaming-twine and beeswax." "Don't envy you, old thing," remarked Jock, returning with the required articles. "It's coming on thick. Personally, I'm jolly glad." "Why?" "The matter of those X-lighters," replied McIntosh. "We are handing them over to the R.A.F., and we've been expecting some one from that crush down to inspect 'em. And we look like going on expecting. 'Tany rate, the S.N.O.'s fed up with the lighters, so I've orders to take 'em round to Donnikirk and dump 'em on the R.A.F. people. Hanged if I want the job! Plugging along with four-knot barges isn't in my line, so I hope it's foggy." Meredith nodded sympathetically, as his deft yet horny fingers waxed the twine and began the intricate task of "whipping" the broken pieces of the golf club. He little knew the part those unwieldy X-lighters would play in his subsequent experiences afloat. The X-lighters were almost flat-bottomed barges, about a hundred feet in length and with a beam of roughly twenty feet. Originally built for work in connection with the naval river flotillas in Mesopotamia, they had found their way to a northern base. Then as a result of negotiations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, the former expressed their intention of turning over the lighters to the Royal Air Force for kite-balloon work.