The motor-boats did their work consistently well and without ostentation. They conducted an efficient examination service among the teeming coast-wise traffic of the south-east coast, through which not a needle could have been smuggled in a bargeload of hay: this was a duty for which the yachtsman was admirably suited. It required tact, for the pre-war coaster was a touchy fellow and accustomed to keep himself to himself: furthermore, it called for intimate co-operation with the Custom officers of coast and estuary ports; but these the yachtsmen had known and drunk a pot of beer with any time during the past five-and-twenty years. The motor-boats found themselves shepherding wayward fishing fleets out of forbidden waters suddenly hedged about with incomprehensible prohibitions; they guarded them on their lawful occasions; and because they knew them and their fathers before them, knew also when to caution wrong-doers and when to confiscate nets and sails. This, it may be remarked in passing, is a wisdom not learned in paths ashore nor yet in the training colleges of the Navy. They served as tenders to the big ships and towed targets for the smaller ones. They brought battle cruisers their love-letters, and acquired both skill and cunning in sinking floating mines with rifle-fire. Thus, in due course, was their probation accomplished. The Navy had observed it all, mostly without comment or eulogy. But when the time was ripe it produced a standardised type of motor patrol boat, armed and equipped in all respects as little men-of-war. “Now,” said the Navy to the yachtsman, “shake hands as one of us, and then suffer us to train you for a little while--even to putting you wise about depth-charges and Hotchkiss guns--ere you have your heart’s desire.” The yachtsmen leant an ear to the Navy Staff Instructors (wise men from a torpedo school called the “Vernon”) with eager willingness. “But where,” asked the Navy, “are the rest of you? There aren’t enough to go round the boats we’ve ordered.” The yachtsmen, labouring at applied mechanics and the true inwardness of high-explosive bombs, said nothing. There had been a time when their numbers would have more than sufficed for all the country’s needs. But some were lying under the sandy soil of Gallipoli, or the marshes of Flanders, and others were whittling model yachts out of bits of wood in Dutch internment camps: the roll of honour in well-nigh every yacht club in the kingdom supplied the answer. The matter was not one for either cavil or regret. A man can die but once, and so long as he dies gloriously the region of discussion as to his whereabouts is passed.