Anxious to get rid of the cumbersome craft, which occupied a large amount of valuable mooring-space in Auldhaig Harbour, the Senior Naval Officer had decided not to await the long-delayed visit of the Air Force representative, but to send the barges round to their new base. "You're quite right, old man," observed Meredith, when, the task of mending the golf club completed, he accompanied Jock McIntosh on deck. "It's going to be a beast of a night. An' No. 1071's doing the Outer Patrol stunt this time." "Well, good luck!" exclaimed McIntosh. Kenneth smiled sourly. "Good luck!" he echoed bitterly. "Nothin' doin', I'm afraid. It's out nosing through the fog, seeing nothing and doing nothing. Haven't had so much as a sniff at a strafed U-boat yet, and don't seem like doing so until the end of the war--whenever that comes off." "Sooner the better as far as I'm concerned," said McIntosh. "I'm fed up to the back teeth absolutely." "Think so?" asked Meredith quietly. "From a purely personal point of view, we'll be jolly sorry when the war is over. Most of us will be wishing ourselves back in the M.L.'s before many weeks have passed." "I'll risk it," rejoined Jock. "Give me the piping times of peace any old day--s'long as we win, which we're bound to do. Hello! here's Wakefield. Now the fun's about to commence. I'll hook it." And with a friendly gesture of greeting to the returning officer commanding H.M.M.L. 1071, McIntosh leapt over the rail, crossed the deck of an intervening craft, and ascended the accommodation-ladder of the parent ship _Hesperus_. CHAPTER II ON PATROL "BRIGHT sort of evening, Meredith," was Wakefield's greeting as he came on board. "I see you've had the engines running. Any trouble down below?" Cedric Wakefield was a burly, pleasant-faced youth of twenty-four, upon whose broad shoulders rested the weight of responsibility of M.L. 1071, her crew and equipment. In those far-off days before practically the whole civilised world was plunged into the throes of war Wakefield was farming in Canada. Had anyone suggested that within a few months he would be treading the deck of a diminutive warship flying the White Ensign, Wakefield would have scouted the idea. The peril of the German menace had hardly made itself felt as far as Western Canada was concerned; while the young Englishman, coming straight from a Public School to the thinly populated slopes of the Rockies, little thought that the call of duty would bring him home hot-foot to fight for King and Country. But when war broke out with startling suddenness Cedric promptly "packed up," worked his passage from Quebec to Liverpool as a fireman, and upon arrival in the Old Country promptly joined the R.N.V.R. as an ordinary seaman. In less than twelve months he was granted a commission, and after a brief course in gunnery and navigation was given command of a motor launch.