Then the party broke up and the visitors departed. Farewells and ‘good lucks’ were exchanged, and the ward room servants locked up the darkened quarters. ‘123’ was off to-morrow, and her captain was rather popular. * * * * * At three p.m. the following afternoon H.M.S. _Master_ hoisted the signal ‘M.K.,’ requesting from the Flag permission to proceed in execution of previous orders. Hardly had the flags reached the yard-arm when an answering splash of colour (red with a white cross) rewarded the efforts of the hawk-eyed signalman. ‘Signal affirmed, sir,’ he reported, and as the _Master’s_ anchor came up into the pipe the Church Pennant fluttered to the deck, and, turning on her heel with a white threshing of water, she came ahead and made for the harbour entrance. Behind her was ‘123,’ who had left the _Parentis’s_ side some ten minutes before. Her Diesels had just started, and the oily smoke of the exhaust was thinning away astern as she fell into line behind her escort. She was on passage now, and her routine was rather different from that of the regular patrol work. On the bridge were Raymond, Boyd, the coxswain, and the look-out. By-and-by when clear of the land the officers could take regular watches and drop into the order of ordinary surface ships. Nevertheless, she was in diving trim, and only needed to flood main ballast to take her under in case of necessity. Down below she looked like a veritable warehouse. Most of the officers’ luggage was going down in the escort, but bags and portmanteaux that were likely to be needed _en route_, or immediately on arrival, were stowed below, and the crew’s bags and hammocks were piled up in the fore-end, a mighty heap of belongings which had had to be compensated for when trimming the boat for diving. As they steamed out of the harbour, the submarine and her greatest enemy, there were many envious glances cast at the boat that was going down for her re-fit. ‘Lucky dogs,’ quoth a watch-keeper in a battleship, as they cleared her counter.[15] ‘Re-fit and leave. I haven’t had any for years.’ Outside the harbour and clear of the defences Boyd put her on her southerly course, and the log was streamed. Not a log that tows astern like that of a surface ship, but a long cylindrical tube carrying vanes at its lower end, which is lowered through a hole in the bottom of the boat and packed to prevent leakage. The Destroyer shot ahead at her twenty knots (it was nothing to her, as she was one of the latest class, and capable of a good deal more) and began her zig-zag. ‘123’ had perforce to keep a straight course, while the _Master_ steamed about a mile ahead of her and dashed across the bows in her efforts to reduce her twenty knots to ten.