The ward-room was a picture of cosiness. The M.-L.'s skipper had seen to that, for he had been sufficiently long in the Service to know the ropes. A few gallons of white enamel, drawn from the dockyard store, had worked wonders on the walls and ceiling of the ward-room, while the beams and timbers had been painted a dark brown to represent oak. The result was that the place resembled the interior of an old-fashioned half-timbered house, while, to carry out the scheme, the electric lamps were encased in cardboard, cut in the fashion of eighteenth-century lanterns. Opening out of the ward-room were the two-bunked sleeping quarters for the officers, also enamelled tastefully and effectively. At the present time these were in a somewhat disordered state, oilskins, sea-boots, and pilotcoats dumped promiscuously, bearing a silent testimony to the fact that M.-L. 4452 had encountered heavy weather in the Straits of Dover. Frank Farnborough, lieutenant and skipper of the M.-L., was a tall, slimly-built man of twenty-five. In civil life he was a consulting engineer, who was just beginning to make a name for himself when war broke out. His chief pastime was yachting, and in his little weatherly nine-ton yawl he had visited and was well acquainted with every port and haven between the Humber and the Lizard, and had a nodding acquaintance with the Dutch and Belgian coast and that of France from Dunkirk to Brest. On the formation of the Motor Boat Reserve he had joined on as an ordinary deckhand, but it was not long before his experience and ability gained him a commission. His sub, Guy Branscombe, has already been introduced. Every man of the crew was an amateur yachtsman. In private life they were respectively barrister, mining engineer, Manchester merchant, two ex-public schoolboys, a stockbroker, and a bank clerk. The barrister, senior in point of age, was ship's cook, he having voluntarily taken on the job, and, considering it was doubtful whether he ever made even a cup of tea for himself prior to 1914, he did remarkably well. The discipline on board would have turned the hair of a pukka R.N. officer grey; but still there was discipline of sorts. They had been shipmates since 1916, turning over from another M.-L., that had perished gloriously in an endeavour to assist a torpedoed liner, when 4452 was received from the contractors. Altogether they were a jovial, hard-working band of comrades. The men had as much yachting as they wanted, summer and winter alike, with the excitement of hunting Fritz or the chance of bumping on a drifting mine thrown in. Yet, far from being fed-up, for they realized that life on an M.-L. was infinitely preferable to foot-slogging in the infantry, their zest was enhanced rather than dimmed. Only a few minutes before the skipper's return, Branscombe had been talking with Able Seaman Brown, R.N.V.R., and stockbroker.