“We’re all all right!” roared the flotilla. They were nearing the light cruiser lines, and the light cruisers, swung to a turn of the tide, all looked the other way. “Come on, all you fire-eaters!” called the flotilla leader, “ain’t you coming on the trail with us to-night? We’re the Y.M.C.A. off for a jaunt: quite respectable, my dear fellars, sure you.... You know all about our respectability, don’t you--’smarvellous!” “Won’t mother let you come?” sniggered a quivering, palpitating black shadow as it slipped past, and then broke into ribald song: “Hi! For the crest of a breaking sea! Ho! For the deep sea roll! Stanchions down and tubes trained free-- Ain’t you comin’ along wi’ we, Or d’you know of a better ’ole?” Irritating doggerel to anyone whose orders are to remain at their moorings at three hours’ notice. The singer broke off and they all started halloing: “Hi! Gate, there! Gate! The sun’ll be scorching our eyes out before we’re through!’ The roar of their fans died away down wind and the flotilla passed through the distant gates and was swallowed by the misty moonlight of the outer sea. The boom-marking trawlers, the humblest of all units of His Majesty’s Fleet, reeled and staggered and nodded to each other after they had passed. “Yon destroyers,” said one, “they’re gey witless bodies, A’m thinkin’.” “Aye,” said a companion dourly, “aye, juist that.” They settled down again to silence and the heart-breaking monotony of their toil. A quarter of an hour elapsed before the silence of the boom line was broken again; then the youngest of the trawlers spoke: “Eh!” he said, and sighed to the bellying floats, “A’d like fine to be a destroyer.” Then silence again. The light cruisers in the meanwhile were fuming among themselves: even members of the same family do not relish gratuitous insult. “Funny little fellows!” said one bitterly. “But there! What can you expect from a destroyer: neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. I took a couple out last month for a blow through; had to send the poor little things back because it was too rough for them.” “_Poor_ little things!” said another acidly. “Their plating _is_ thin, isn’t it?... Well, as I was saying when all this vulgar interruption happened, my Chief rigged a Weston’s purchase and lifted off the top of my L.P. cylinder ...” and they plunged into their private affairs again. The destroyers remaining in the T.B.D. anchorage felt that somehow the last word remained with the light cruisers. “Always talkin’ obstetrics ...” floated across the heave and uneasy motion of the moonlit harbour from the flotilla trot. “I know. Disgustin’....” After which, conversation among the light cruisers perceptibly dwindled. From out of the wind-swept spaces of the North Sea as the night wore on came a murmur of voices: it grew nearer and deepened: “Ho, there! Gate, gate!”