“That’s your idea and we all think so too. Please tell that in Paris to whomever it may concern. You’ll make one more to be told to shut his mouth and mind his own business, for the order is to run away--yes, sir--to run away from the U-boats--and to fire the stern gun if one has time. As for attacking--strictly forbidden, by gum! not on the programme!” “But how can we say that we rule the waves if our ships must run and never show fight?” “Quite so, that’s just what I want to know. They cram millions of tons of merchandise into us. They say, ‘Carry them to Europe, my son, you have nothing to fear!’ Every day we learn of a friend who has gone down before a U-boat, but it seems that didn’t count, and if we are lucky enough to meet a submarine, we mustn’t hurt it. We must leave it alone or turn our backs, like ----! “And if we get a dose of it? Look at my masts--we haven’t even four wires to send a wireless to comrades in the neighbourhood! It doesn’t need a genius to discover what merchant-ships need! The Skippers’ Association keeps asking for it again and again and it’s as plain as the nose on your face! But everybody knows that we shan’t go on strike, and the big bugs say either that we’re afraid or else that we are rebels. So it’s go ahead or bust! And we go ahead--and every one of us knows that his turn is bound to come.” “Besides which, skipper--though I don’t wish to criticize the Merchant Service--the passengers are sure to be drowned if the ships are torpedoed. On the _Pamir_ you have two lifeboats, which might be enough for your forty men. But I have crossed on ships with a thousand or twelve hundred in the crew and no means of saving more than four or five hundred. As a rule, half the lifeboats--all those on the side which goes up in the air after the torpedoing--are of no use; so you can see that it takes courage to go to sea and that it’s folly to send whole regiments without protection. After so many months of war the civilians still find it amusing. If things were like that on land, the parliaments or the newspapers would have had them changed long ago. But knowing nothing of seafaring, the country swallows any story it’s told. And you’re in luck that it doesn’t understand anything about it.”