Punctually to the appointed minute, M.-L. 4452 cast off and proceeded seaward. Her sister ships had preceded her, and were running in single column line ahead. It was a pitch-dark night. The sea was as smooth as the proverbial mill-pond. Shoreward the land was enshrouded in darkness, not a light being visible. Viewed from a short distance, the Kentish coast, normally defined by lines of twinkling lights, but now looming faintly against the sombre sky, looked more like a desolate land than a populous corner of England, literally linked by a chain of seaside towns. The M.-L.'s were under way without navigation lights, only a small lamp astern of each enabling those following to keep station. The little craft were cleared for action, for it had been known that hostile torpedo-boats had approached within a few miles of the port of Dover. Branscombe, standing by the quarter-master in the little wheel-house, fully realized the danger of the operation. He revelled in it, notwithstanding the fact that the M.-L.'s were passing over one of the most heavily-mined portions of the sea adjoining the British Isles. A few fathoms beneath the boat's keel were mines in hundreds, that, in conjunction with nets and other elaborate devices, formed an impregnable barrier to the passage of German U-boats. As long as the mines remained anchored and submerged they were dangerous only to the type of craft they were intended to destroy; but after the heavy blow of the last few days there was a possibility, nay, a probability, that some would break adrift and float on the surface, a menace to those who had lawful business upon the waters, a prospect sufficient to stimulate the imagination--if not to get on the nerves--of the hardiest mariner. It was almost on this very spot twelve months previously that Branscombe had ordered the gun's crew to open fire at what he took to be a periscope, but what, on closer examination, proved to be a derelict boat-hook; while on another occasion the Sub, inexperienced in those days, saw a large dark object slither under the water. To his excited imagination it could be nothing less than a U-boat, hurriedly diving to escape detection. Ordering full-speed ahead, Branscombe steered straight for the rippling swell, and detonated a depth charge on the spot where the submarine had vanished. A badly mutilated porpoise came up in the cascade of foam. The Sub was badly chipped for some considerable time over the affair, but it was excusable. The M.-L.'s motto is to hit and hit hard at anything of a suspicious nature. Explanations, if necessary, can follow later, but one has to take no chances with Fritz and all his dirty tricks.