"Usual lot," replied Trevannion as he offered his subordinate a cigarette. "Coastwise tramps an' a couple of hookers for the 'Beef Trip'. We're to escort the latter to the North Hinder, and then put into Harwich to await instructions." The suggestion of the Beef Trip made the outlook a little more promising. The term is applied to boats running between Great Britain and Holland and carrying live cattle for the ultimate sustenance of a hungry population. Many and many a time the Huns tried to intercept the Anglo-Dutch traffic. Raids from Borkum and Zeebrugge by swift German torpedo-boats made the trip a fairly exciting one, and the chances of out-escorting destroyers bringing the Huns to close action were always both possible and probable. It was a change from spending months of comparative inactivity at Scapa Flow, where in the piercing cold of the Northern climes the mammoth fleet of Britain lay waiting in vain for another opportunity of Der Tag. Only once before had the chance offered, and then night and mist had robbed the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet of his opportunity of annihilating von Scheer's Command. At eight bells the _Bolero_ cast off from the buoy and proceeded down the Forth, her ensign floating proudly from her diminutive mizzen mast. Past the giant hush-ships lying off Rosyth she glided, threading her way through a multitudinous assortment of craft that the Royal Navy has taken as its own: brand-new light cruisers, monitors with huge 17-inch guns, hogged-backed P-boats, mine-layers, coastal M.-B's, X-barges, and other weird types of naval architecture. Under the northern span of the Forth Bridge the _Bolero_ passed, exchanging signals with the little station on the rock that supports the central pier; then, settling down to a modest twenty-five knots, she shaped a course towards the cluster of vessels awaiting her off Leith and Portobello Roads. The convoy was, as the Lieutenant-Commander anticipated, a motley crowd. There were rusty-sided tramps, tramps fantastically decorated with dazzle; tramps large and small, wall-sided and with high and low freeboards. Nevertheless, with all their shortcomings, they formed part of the arteries of Empire, manned as they were by British seamen, whom the piratical Huns failed utterly to intimidate by threats of ruthless murder and sinking without a trace. The short spring day was drawing to a close before the convoy weighed and shaped a course towards the frowning Bass Rock. Ahead steamed a destroyer, two more were on each flank of the long-drawn-out line, while astern, as a sort of whipper-in, came the _Bolero_, her turbine engines running at quarter speed.