The deed was not one of those lightning-stroke affairs that lack premeditation and are accomplished on the spur of the moment in the heat of battle. The elements of conflict were there, guns, ammunition, soldiers, and all the stage scenery necessary to give a picturesque and enthralling setting. The chief actor alone failed to appear in the picture. I would not for the world attempt to minimize the superb heroism of any holder of a much-coveted decoration. Yet there is a marked difference between this particular deed and all others that had gone before. It was accomplished in a place remote from other British battle forces. The young officer neither carried a wounded man on his back amid a storm of bullets, his comrades looking on, nor with a machine-gun held up a horde of Huns. Harking back, it is interesting to recall that the first person to win the V.C. was a bluejacket—an above-salt-water sailor. Holbrook belonged to the same splendid Service, but to a section unborn when Charles Davis Lucas flung overboard a live shell from H.M.S. _Hecla_ off Bomarsund in 1854. The commander of B 11 gained his fourpennyworth of bronze in a submarine below the sea. What Holbrook’s meritorious action lacks in intensity of swift drama is more than compensated by the cool and calculated daring of the whole proceeding. Standing quietly in a sealed chamber breathing ‘canned air’ for nine mortal hours, dodging mines, torpedo-boats, and gunfire from forts, requires a steady nerve and a concentration of mind and purpose beyond what is called for in open fighting. He accomplished what he had to do, brought back his ship, fourteen men and an officer, quite safely, and betrayed an eager anxiety as to what his next task might be.