The foremost gun’s crew of a British destroyer stood huddled in the lee of the gun-shield with their duffle hoods pulled down over their foreheads. The sea was calm, and the stars overhead shone with frosty brilliance. A figure groped its way forward with a bowl of cocoa, and joined the group round the breech of the gun. They drank in turn, grunting as the warmth penetrated into their interiors. The distant gunfire swelled momentarily. Above the horizon far ahead intermittent gleams marked the activity of searchlight and star-shell. “Them’s our guns,” said one of the cocoa-drinkers. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat, and stared ahead. It never seemed to occur to any of them that they might equally well be German guns. [Illustration] “That’s right,” confirmed the sight-setter. “There’s guns going like that for ’undreds an’ ’undreds of miles. Right away up from the sea. Me brother’s there--somewhere....” For a moment they ruminated over a mental picture of the sight-setter’s brother, a mud-plastered stoical atom, somewhere along those hundreds of miles of wire and bayonets that hedged civilisation and posterity from the Unnamable. “Switzerland to the sea,” said the speaker. He jerked the breech-lever absent-mindedly towards him, and closed it again with a little click. “An’ then we takes on,” said a loading number. “Us an’ these ’ere.” He tapped the smooth side of a lyddite shell lying in the rack beside him. “An’ this ’ere,” said the man who had brought the cocoa. He thrust forward the cumbersome hilt of a cutlass at his hip. The starlight gleamed dully on the steel guard. “You won’t use that to-night, my son,” said the gunlayer. “We ain’t goin’ to ’ave no _Broke_ an’ _Swift_ song an’ dance to-night.” He stared out into the clear darkness. “We couldn’t never git near enough.” Nevertheless, he put out his hand in the gloom and reassured himself of the safety of a formidable bar of iron well within reach. Once in the annals of this war had a British destroyer come to grips at close quarters with the enemy; thereafter her crew walked the earth as men apart, and the darlings of the high gods. The night grew suddenly darker. It was the mysterious hour that precedes the dawn, when warring men and sleeping animals stir and bethink them of the morrow. The destroyer slackened speed and turned, the wide circle of her wake shimmering against the darkness of the water. As they turned, other dark shapes were visible abeam, moving at measured distance from each other without a light showing or a sound but the faint swish of the water past their sides. The flotilla had reached the limit of its beat, and swung round to resume the unending patrol.