“Talk!” echoed her neighbour. “Who wants to talk? I want to rest. Did you see that signal just now from the S.O.M.S.?” (Senior Officer of Mine-sweepers). “We slip at dawn, my hearties, to go over the ground again--the same old ground in the dawn--ugh!” Her tone was jerky and irritable. “I hate the dawn.” “Hullo, hullo!” observed a Subdivisional Leader. “Nerves a bit--eh?” “Nerves be sugared! That affair this morning was nothing. No, I don’t care about the dawn, that’s all. Diving seafowl break the surface just under my bows and give one a turn in a bad light.” The sloop that didn’t want to talk had hove a German mine up in her sweep that morning, and brought it under her counter before anyone noticed it was there. She lay rolling in the swell with the horns missing impact by inches; to veer the wire would have probably caused the detonation, and the lieutenant in command ordered his ship’s company to abandon ship, crawled over the stern with a queer grim smile on his face and removed the primer with a spanner. It was an entirely unpleasant quarter of an hour, and he was at that moment giving a lurid summary of his sensations at the time to an assembly of three brother captains in the tiny wardroom of the next ship. “When I was working on the east coast--” began another sloop. “Ah!” interrupted the end ship of the line, “that was clearing the trade routes, I suppose? Of course _we_ clear the fleet routes--the path of the battle squadrons!” The east coast sweeper was a new arrival. “Very useful, no doubt. On the other hand, we fed England. If the trade routes had got foul, England would have starved. They’ve trained trawlers to do the work now, but when I was on that job----” “East coast?” chipped in another recent addition to the flotilla. “Is there a war there too? I come from the Clyde, myself.” The Tyne-built sloop snorted. “I’ve seen our East Coast Striking Force go out past us while we were at work and be back again with wounded and prisoners within half a dozen hours of leaving harbour. War, indeed! It’s on our doorstep.” “That’s because you haven’t got a fleet to keep it away from your doorstep. Our fighting ships have to steam south for a day and a night to find an enemy, while we sweep and wait and sweep again against their home-coming.” The speaker glanced at her neighbour through a rust-streaked hawse-pipe. “’Member Jutland? How they came back that evening all battle-stained----?” “And didn’t forget to give us a cheer as they passed!” The sloop chuckled. “I had an artist fellow on board the other day. He came out to paint the headlands and the fleet coming back from a sweep south. He was _very_ sick.”