It was brave work, but all round him in the darkness amid the flames of guns and blazing ships and all the savagery of that onslaught, the Drifter Patrol was taking its gruel not a whit less gallantly. The survivors launched their splintered dinghies, carrying their wounded with them, and paddled clear of the blazing wrecks that a few minutes before had been ship and home. The two enginemen of the _Violet May_, Engineman Ewing and Engineman Noble, succeeded in launching their boat, and lowered into it the mate, mortally wounded, and a wounded deckhand. The remainder of the crew lay inextricably entangled in the blazing wreckage, dead. The survivors paddled clear, waited till the enemy had passed on, and then closed their little ship again. The fire had hold of her forward, steam was pouring from her wrecked engine-room, and the ammunition was exploding broadcast about her decks. “A doot she’s sinkin’,” said Ewing stoutly. Noble said nothing: he was not given overmuch to speech, but he made the painter fast and proceeded to climb inboard again. Ewing followed and between they fought and overcame the fire. “Dinna leave me, Jamie,” cried the mate piteously; “Dinna leave me in the little boat.” “Na, na,” was the reply. “We’ll na leave ye,” and presently they brought their wounded back on board and took them below again. The mate was laid on his bunk and Ewing fetched his shirts from his bag and tore them up into bandages. “An’ them his dress shirts,” murmured Noble. It was his first and last contribution to the narrative. They took turn and turn about to tend the wounded, plug the shot-holes, and quench the smouldering embers of the fire, reverently dragging the wreckage from off their dead, and comforting the dying mate in the soft, almost tender accents of the Celt. “’Tis nae guid,” said the mate at last. “Dinna fash about me, lads. A’ll gang nae mair on patrol,” and so died. But they saved their little ship, and she lies in a corner of the basin at her base, a mass of twisted metal and charred woodwork, to testify to the courage of the British fisherman in war. The night’s work counted for a _German_ victory, and had it not been for the pitiful _braggadocio_ of the German official _communiqué_, one would have been tempted to leave it at that. True that seven little fishing craft with a gun in each bow would never make port again, _but seven more took their places before the sun was over the horizon on the morrow of the affair_. Three score or so of British seamen had finished their life’s trick and passed to their long watch below. But England and the Channel Patrol have the story of their passing: the pity is that it must here be so brief.