WAR STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 62, 13 March 1915, Page 17

WAR STORIES.

JHE KIDNAPPED TORPEDO

- BOAT

(By ROBERT TARSACRE.)

Devine entered his uncle's drawing room with no confident step. Three days before he bad left his first command, i torpedo boat No. 00, and his reputation, ' under ten fathoms of water eight miles west of the Lizard. The fact that no lives had gone with it had been in no way due to her commander. Wherefore, knowing who would be there, Devine would rather have stayed away. It was not pleasant to come face to face with the one girl in the world when all the coast is buzzing with the story of your shame, unless you are a very cool man, which the official report of the disaster, read between the lines, seemed to think Devine was not.. She was reading by the window, and looked tip as he entered. "Is it true?" she asked abruptly, with no attempt to conceal the scorn on her wondrously chiselled features. A dull flush of shame spread over hi« •face—a strong young fitce on which alcohol, the hereditary enemy of his race, was just beginning to tell its tale. "1 suppose so, Norah," he answered, seating himself heavily. f*he was his cousin, daughter of the man he had some to see, and jealous unto hatred of the honour of her house. "And you have the effrontery to call here!" she cried hotly. "Any other man would have preferred to follow his ship." "I called," said Devine, colouring again, "in response to a note from my uncle. 1 believe he wishes to see mc." The girl arose. "I'll send Battersby to you," she said, and left the room. Devine, dumb with shame, attempted no defence, but sat and gazed mutely at the rich hangings of the luxurious room, forgetting for once to wonder )k>\v it was done on a vice-ad-miral's pay. In his uncle's room, whither Battersby, tbe footman, conducted his, his reception was more cordial. '"Sit down, my boy, and tell mc all about it," said the vice-admiral, propped up in his bed. A week before epilepsy had suddenly descended on him aboard his ship the Emperor, .then lying in harbour. ' '"Drunk, funk, skunk," replied Devine, with the apathy of utter sclf-disguet. I "1 saw the thing loom up ahead of ue, and Inst my head.'" I "Rumour says." put in h'.s uncle, "that you had not been sober for three day 6." "Four, to be precise,'' was the hopeless reply. "Cut us clean in two," he went on. "and the next thing I remember was sobbing like .a fool on the liner's deck. Nerve.' all on end, I suppose." "But Summersley, second in command —he'll not be—cr —altogether out of it, I suppose?" "1 don't quite understand," ea'.d Devine, stirred out of his apathy. "1 mean, he'll stand by you. He, to put it frankly, will take 6ome of the bljme." "Suntmereley! Good heavens, no! It was through hini that we're all here. He saw what had happened to mc, and took hold himself. But for him there would have been widows and orphans. Summersley's a hero!" "Umph!" commented the rider man, eyeing his sister's son askance. Such had not been hie own policy in the upward climb. "Most unfortunate business," he went on: "but I suppose it's got to be faced. Well, 1 sent for you to-day to know if you'd do mc a little favour. You heard of my seizure?" The young man nodded. "You're getting round all right, though, I hope?" "Slowly. And in the meantime I left some papers aboard which. 1 particularly want. Can you fetch them for mc?" "I'm not very keen on facing Service people just now,' stammered Devine. "If you could get somebody else " "I know —I know. 1 quite understand your feelings. But I don't caxe to send a stranger, who's liable to pry, particularly as the papers are of a somewhat private nature—very private; in fact, I was a fool to have them aboard at all." And the young man wondered vaguely at the sweat that grew on his uncle's brow. "You'll find them in a big blue mamla envelope in the top right-hand pigeonhole of my desk in the state-room. Take my keys—<they are on the tabic beside you—and tell Rigbye, who's in charge, that you've come for my glasses. Do you mind?" "I'll go if you web it," assented Devine, and some - time afterwards departed. / On the way he called in at the bar of the "Blue Peter" to fortify hhnself to face the brethren of his cloth on tbe Emperor. The Emperor, being a ship of gentlemen, treated him as though hie disaster had never been heard of—all, that is, except one cock-nosed middy, who uttered an audible snigger as Devine, having got the blue envelope, descended the gangway to go ashore. It was that rankling snigger that drove him into the "Blue Fctcr" again. There be met Johnny Borrowby, recently dismissed from the Navy for drunkenness, who invited him to come and drown his sorrow and drink damnation to the Admiralty and all its works. Wherefore happened that which the viceadmiral, knowing his nephew's weakness, ought to have foreseen. Three hours later Miss Norah Devine, dressed as she had left the street, swept into her father's room like an outraged goddess. Being fully aware of the state of her father's health, if not of the nature of the papers, 6hc really ought to have known better. "Father, what do you think?" she burst out, her eyes ablaze w'.th all the passionate pride of her nature. "Harry Devine has been arrested helplessly drunk outside a tavern " Her father sat up in bed with tbe sweat running off him in rills. "You're mad, Norah!" he shouted fiercely. "It's impossible!" "And, what- is more, incriminating papers have been found on him. He's a traitor! He's been selling official information to some other country—secrets that the Admiralty people have suspected oi leaking dut for some time. Treason, espionage, or some other hideous thing they call it. . . . Father! Father!" But her father nevt?r said a word. 1 He was dead. What Harry Devine said, reflecting in his cell next morning after the double charge had been formally read over to him, was: "Might as well be hanged far a sheep as a lamb, particularly 6ince I'm to blame. The old man's not fit to face it, and if Norah knew it would kill her. ißut oh, the horror of it!—the loathsome, I filthy, meanness of it.'" he added with a shudder. "Why conldn't he be content I with his dean pay?" Twelve months later he came out of prison, and stood blinking in tbe sunlight, trying to make up his mind between prussic acid and a deep, deep dive

from the pier-end. Incidentally be was at the came time fighting against ta gnawing, desire to have a last word with hie cousin, which desire drew him at Jast, after two visits to a bar parlour, opposite her housft, A third bar parlour was necessary before he maDaged to step up the garden and pull the Toell. She had evidently seen him coming, for the maid admitted him wiXhout a word. '•Take a seat," eaid hie cousin, as she would have said to a slouching- beggar. She wae seated at a desk, busy amongst domestic bills. Devine mutely obeyqd, with the damp chills of unutterable shame chasing each other along Ihis spine. The girl went on writing. "That's all I can spare," she said at last, rising and giving him a cleaque for one hundred pounds. "It will see you J decently out of the country. Now please I go. 7, "I—l didn't come for thife, Xarah " | "Mias Devine, please." "I said 'Norah,'" went on Devine. etung to resentment. "I'm going away —eomewhere, and I called in the hope that you'd at least concede mc a decent good-bye." "To you!" she retorted, lacing him like a marble image of ecorn. "To the man who cold hie honour;,killed my father, be , trayed hie country, and disgraced his family! To a cowaTd, mnrdeTor, traitor! Will you go?" Devine rose, and slowly toTe the cheque in pieces, laid them on her Sheraton table, where once his photo had an honoured place, and took up his hat. "Good-bye," he gulped, and left her. ITe was going out to the nearest dealer in poison, but a sound following him from tire room brought him back for a last look, and what he saw deprived the chemist of a customer and the coroner of a job. Norah Devine, the proudest beauty in all that loyal borough, was bowed over the d*fek with her head in her arms, sobbing like a stricken child. Devine eoftly closed the cibor and went. Outside, in the shadow of the cathedral I poplars, he ran , against Johnny Borrowby, more seedy and bloated than ever. Johnny acclaimed him joyfully as a brother outcast and dragged him to a eide-etreet tavern. The insatiable 3evil of whisky in Devine's inside was'tiamouring loudly to be fed, but he managed to say in reply to inquiry: "Dry ginger." "Dry what? , ' eaid Borrowl|y, looking stupidly at him. "Dry ginger." Johnny stared unbelievingly out of his bleared eyes. "Since when?" "Half an hour ego." ( "Can't do it," said Johnny, with the dull conviction of the hopelessly damned/ "I'll try, anyhow. I'm going to retrieve." < "Can't. You're top low—like mc." "I'd have been lower by now but for a girl. I've brought her to the depths of misery and disgrace, and the least 1 can do is to sa-ve her any more. Do you know if my Seabird ie still afloat?" "She- was at her moorings yesterday. Carter and some other cube have ucen using her," said Borrffwby. 'Try a drop of gin in it." "Xo, thiuiks. And 37m going, too. Good-bye!" . / Johnny gazed moodily after his, retreating figure. As a beginning of his fresh- start, Devine eou<rht n eihave, 'ari<l found a ■little back-street shop wherein he was not likely to run against anyone, he, knew. Therein he erred, for during the lathering something „ hazily familiar began to grow in the fat-e above him. The man's English -was excellent, his deft uee of the razor Continental, his shop a mixture of the two, ana , strangely at variance with hie flawless diamond tie-pin. Enlightenment ruehed over Devine just as he arose from tho chair. "Ah! 1 know now," he in voluntarily exclaimed. "Know! Oh, yes. What?" interrogated the barber, just a trifle disconcerted beneath his professional suavity. Devine apologised. "I've been trying to place you," ho explained; "and it's juet etruek mc. Didn't you use to pome and shave my uncle?" ' » ' "Uncle, jyr? I don't recall." was the composed reply. . » ; "Vice-Admiral Devine. He' said nobody else in the town could shave him decently." "You have made a mistake, sir; I cannot rocall the gentleman." "Sorry," said Devine, ■wondering why the man should lie. Then he went down to the harbour, and that evening the half-decked yacht Seabird, twenty-nine feet overall, especially designed and built for Devine in his clean days, went to sea on the last of the ebb. She had on board a trawl, some food, and a mongrel dog that had followed Devine along the jetty. Some half-consumed bottles of whisky, relics of Carter and hie brother cubs, had .gone over the eide immediately after .-discovery. * At her helm was the owner, going out to seek his bread where none of his kind might come—a nomad of the coast. From a drowsy battleship that he passed a keen-eyed commander named Wishburn looked down and recognised him. "And the Service so short of good officers," he mused sadly. "The pity \ of it! I wonder -why he did it? Now, if his soul had been cast in the same mould as his late uncle and namesake, I could have understood it." (Lindsay Island, wliither Devine had arrived and pitched his .bed in the course of his driftings alorg the coast, ie divided from mother England by ten ■miles of water that 'never sees a keel save the smacke of the island. From the other or seaward side of Lindsay the next stop is Europe. The island hae one harbour, twenty small singlehanded smacke, jmd two hundred eoule all told, Whoso communication with the outside world is limited to the coasting ships they sometimes meet on the fishing grounds, which happens only when they wander far afield, since Lindsay is guarded by a three-mile fringe of lurking rocke and sands which only an islander knows, and nobody else wants to I know. Torpedo vessels, in particular, have so little business in the neighbourhood of Lindsay that probably nobody but himself of all its little community had ever, seen one before that morning, ■when Devine put his bead out of his .bedroom window, and stared down at the harbour in Jhe July sunlight. Wandering down to the Trawiboat Inn" with his curiosity, he found Siddy Reamer fast getting drank. "Found her just along to -west'aTd o' daylight, granting along to westard o' Spike Buoy," volunteered Siddy, who worked w-hen poverty moved him, and was more often at sea alone than in ■company. "What's happened to her?" asked Devine. "Broke down or smnma-t. They were some glad to see mc, 'specially when they knew where I was from. Man-o'-war, isn't she? Ugry4ookin' little devil," added fiiddy r .gezing placidly down to-

words the harbour. "Four golden sovereigns they give mc for bringin' 'em in, an' as many more they'll pay mc to take her out when she's ready. They've been tinkerin' and eizzlin' somewhere in i her belly ever since she dropped anchor." "What have they dropped her mast for 1" asked Devine, whose naval eye had instantly noted its absence. "Manoovers," said Siddy profoundly. "Said they didn't want the enemy to ftnd 'em. Couldn't have cotno to a better shop." s Which was perfectly true. Lindsay's narrow strip of harbour ie hidden from the sea by a lofty arm of furze-covered land that effectively screens it from passing eyes. All the same, Devine vaguely wondered how Jong it had been the custom to hold manoeuvres in July. ' Not wishing, with the shame of hie fall etill strong within him, to meet "any of the brethren of hie better days,'- anil having no immediate need he betook himself fo*the day to side of the island with a camera/ *"The instrument had come his Way quite by accident a month before, and had helped to tide him over many a brooding hour. When he returned he found every, able-bodied man on the island heatiflcally. drunk at the "Trawlboat," in charge of 1 a naval seaman, who invited all and sundry to come and be merry. "Work!" he had echoed jocularly, In reply to their qualms. "Work when we'ie gone. What's the good o' working : when you can drink?" And sure enough the island, alcoholic to a man -when it involved no expense, had obeyed generously. Dovine managed to evade the invitation, and slipped quietly away to his lodgings with the mystery growing on him, After tea he strolled found the harbour and reconnoitred" th,e'/crippled stranger from the furze-tbpped hill. Ther&Jie met an another seaman', lying prone and scanning the horizon with a telescope. Thfemeet. ; ing was quite accidental. Devine, creeping .amongst the ibuehee to better hie ..view of the harbour, tumbled upon him without warning, and in an instant the man was standing above him, tense, alert, and right hand in his pocket. "You're coom after my lobster pote!"J broke out Devine, belligerently, imitating the drawing dialect of the islanders. "Lobster pots?" repeated the man, eyeing him uncertainly. "Aye. Don't you say you ain't. Tee 'been watch in' you this las' ten minutes. Don' the King find his men enough to feed on ! wi'out stealin , the catches of folk? If your cheekylookin' chip wante lobsters, bjjv 'embuy 'em!"' '<Shut your blather!" growled the man, seating himself again. His hand came away from hig pocket—empty. "I come up here to smoke ay pipe. I don't want your lobsters." "Oil, don't you?" grumbled Devine unbelievingly. There was not a lobsterpot in the island, but lie arose and went down to the beach with the chilly feelin" that but for his presence of mind he would be lying dead amongst the furze. ■Late that': evening lie took a dinghy and dropped silently down «he harbour. Stygian darkness and the deep stillness of a brooding storm lay over the island. Ever and again a bacchanalian bar of "He's a jolly good fellow" told of the revellers going home, coupled anon with the shrill voice of a wife who sought to convince one that her house wae not for him. Presently a splash of oars at the jetty spoke of, their entertainer returning from his duty, and Devine, glad of the pilotage, followed the sound till a bump and a subdued challenge located his quarry. Very stealthily he twisted round, and hacked nearer till the respir-' ing glow of two cigars were almost overhead, and voices floated down to him. He heard the man of the boat walk aft and say his say. "Drunk as owls, every mother's son on the place," was the report. "They'll be fit for nothing but nursing their heads when they awake." '•Good! Keep them at it to-morrow. If one of them gets to sea he'll gossip to the first thing he meets." The man went forward, and the two cigars breathed again. Presently another man came aft. "Well?" "Another five hours at the least," reported the new-comer, whose voice Devine instantly recognised as a mutinous engine-room artificer who had once served under him. Xursc it! Can't you patch her up enough for the run!" "Can't be done, sir. Piston's buckled all to blazes. Wouldn't go ten miles." "And there'll be half the Navy hunting us by daylight," said the other voice in moody irritation. He dismissed the engineer, and spoke again, evidently to his companion of the cigar. "I •wish I'd never listened to your infernal tongue!" "Tush, tush, my friend," came the reply, and Devine nearly betrayed himself, for it was the voice of the barber who had shaved his uncle. "You know they'll never risk their precious keels in this spiky neighbourhood, even if they ever dreamed we were here. Worry not. To-morrow night we leave, and by daylight we are in sanctuary, and you and your men gentlemen for life."

"If your countryman hasn't been waylaid with our tell-tale dinge in his rusty side, and the story squeezed out of him." "•Pooh! Never could. Tklake for home before daylight,' were his orders, and never has he bungled yet " "What's to do?"

"My cigar-case. Must have left it in your cabin." And the sound of footsteps went along the deck. The tinkering in the enginero4m stopped. Devine grew alert. °

I Next came a click and a rasp somewhere higher up. Devine's trained ear took it in instinctively, and the next moment he had gone over the side with the silence of an otter. Scarce had the ripplee of his departure died away ere his empty dinghy was in a, dazzling halo of searchlight. Devine, homeward bound six feet under the surface, felt its ghostly luminance pass and repass over his head in its sweeping ecour of the harbour. Ten minutes later he was in bed.

Before the riding smacks could swing to the flood next morning he of the full purse was ashore again, lavishing his hospitality op. all who came. Result as before: not a man saw fit to go to sea while good beer could be had for the shouting. Of ail the adult males only six were sober. These were Devine and four others whom he had beguiled away from temptation at daybieak, and talked to in the privacy of hie landlady's eonchitic parlour: Long Jake Pippin and his mate, little Charlie Berthonby, the steadiest pair on the island, and two big-limbed, studious young stalwarts whom Devine had instructed in the rudiments of navigation, and thereby earned their undying esteem. At first the quartet looked sceptical, bnt by-and-by believed, and sat down to wait The (sixth sober man was Siddy Reamer, most miserable creature under the sky; for he also very early in the morning had been, removed from temptation, since the- passage *at-«f Lindsay was aa.

work for * drunken pilot. Wherefore Siddy sat in thirsty rumination all day on the torpedo-boat's deck, listening wistfully to the abandon of, fiis brethren ashore. Hie smack was towing aetern. But in the late dusk, what time the torpedo-boat's propellers began to try a few tentative revolutions, a boat came alongside and a sullenly nonchalant voice bade Sidd/ come home to his i father, who was suddenly ailing. To Siddy the illness would not have mattered but that his father possessed three emacks and many pigs, and, what mattered etill more, two other sons, no lovers of Siddy. Lees than a. minute) after he heard the news Siddy was in the boat, followed by a voice from above I demanding to know what he was^bout.

"Can't come. Old chap dyin'. Them two devils '11 collar the lot."

Such was the pilot's reply, and all the fuming wrath and entreaties of the voice above eould v not bring him back. ; f What're you , about?" saifl Siddy. "This clwp'll take you out .juet as well as mc."

The officer peered down and bade "this iihap" come up. Devine obeyed, and stod,d' before him, outwardly sheepish, after the manner of the islanders, but inwardly not at all anxious, knowing that even if the officer had met him in his naval days, darkness and the beard he had grown would prevent recognition.

"You hear what he says? Can you take us out now?"

"How much?" asked Devine in sour indifference. The officer told him, and Devine sulktfy agreed. "But I'm fetchin' my own emac-k first. I'm not comirf back in that," Jie stipulated with a scowl of contempt'%t Siddy's Betty, riding astern—a venerable craft that had more than once evinced a eudden weariness of life when still many miles from home, perhaps out of sympathy with its namesake, Siddy's wife, who had long been weary of her husband.

"Fetch anything you like, but be quick," snapped the officer, whom the barber just then came along the deck and addressed as Naldrett. "Be quick —quick!" he repeated, as Devine went down to Siddy and disappeared in the harbour gloom. Evidently the business was getting on Naldrett's nerves.

Twenty minutes later the torpedoboat glided out of Lindsay harbour with Devine's smack in tow, her binnacle light the only visible glim aboard. At the wheel Was Naldrett, obedient as a slave to the thick-voiced instructions of his pilot, who stood beside him. Somewhere forward two seamen were planning future'careers'of everlasting drink and no work. In the commander's cabin was'the barber—probably asleep. These were all the crew that Devine had been able to perceive in hie reconnoitrings from the furze. , Down below the engine-room staff were virtually prisoners, since Naldrett in his fears had locked all doors against any chance of escaping light. Three miles seaward Devine declared all shoals behind and good water ahead. "Where may ye be for?" he asked idly. '•'That's my business," said Naldrett curtly, giving him his fee and ringing the engine-room to stop. In answer to his shout the two seamen dropped a ladder and hauled the pilot's smack alongside. And then followed the amazing spectacle of a brand-new British torpedoboat boarded and taken almost within hail of its native cliffs. It was a bloodless victory of less than two minutes. The smack, gliding alongside, shot up four, lithe, barefooted figures, - who promptly clubbed the astonished seamen with implements brought for the purpose. Naldrett felt the muzzle of a Navy revolver at the back of his neck, and decided that the owner of the clearcut naval voice behind it had come to stay. When the trio were trusted, Devine and his henchmen went aft and found the * barber, who spat fury and unEnglish malediction at them aa the ropes went round him. Devine took" the wneeT. The touch of it awoke a flood of recollection, sending him back to 'the daya of his joyous middyhood, whence his memories strayed upwards till they landed with a jar against the night of his fall—that haunting nightmare of collision'and missing nerve. Shuddering slightly, he cast the baneful throughts from him and rang for full-speed ahead. The engine-room obeyed in blissful ignorance. On board the < flagship Trombone Lieutenant' Wishburn stood arraigned before a tribunal of his superiors to answer for the loss of torpedo-boat X 44 with eight good mcn —a kind of informal inquiry into »the disaster pending the return of the swift ships that had gone to scour the seas for .flotsam or other evidence. Amongst the gold-spangled judges was Wishburn's father .recently promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, never a flicker of the shame and grief that burned within him showing through the inscrutable composure of his face. He had been summoned, to help sit in judgment on his son, and justice must be done, even though it plunged hie house to, everlasting ignominy. > Pale and nervous, young Wishburn told his tale in the dull, lethargic voice of utter abasement. The facts were these. Lieutenant Wishburn, with Lieutenant Naldrett aa his second in command, and eleven men of all grades, had taken train to a famous shipbuilding yard to receive from the contractors and bring home the new torpedo-Imafc X 44. On a fine Friday noon they took possession and sailed. About midnight they hit something, and the dawn found Lieutenant Wishburn and four men afloat in the torpedo-boat dinghy. Wishburn, son of his father; Engineer Lieutenant Rugg, Who had risen from the ranks and swore by the Service; Luke. A.8., the acting boatswain, whose promition was drawing nigh; and two other A.B.s nearly due for pension—all these were asleep when it happened, and the grey dawn found them in the Berthon dinghy, gazing dazedly over an empty sea at the blue outline of Yorkshire in the distance, whence they arrived after three hours' pulling. Of the rest the torpedo-boat's company, all missing, Naldrett had recently been cautioned and reduced in rank, which is not comforting to a man with expensive tastes and" nothing but his pay to indulge them with. The two engine-room artificers had worked with Rugg when he was one of them, and consequently brooded over his preferment. The three stokers were neither more nor less malcontent than most of their kind, and the two remaining A.B.s were of the sullen, malingering type, in whom the Service had bred nothing but grievance' and rancour. There was also a stranger aboard. Throughout all his evidence Wishburn had stuck doggedly to the. belief that he and hie watch below had been drugged. "Drugged l ." r"nested the chairman, an Admiral high, glowering over his glasses in sour disbelief. "By whom? And why?" "Don't know, air, but we must have been, otherwise we should have come ■•wajr with clearer iajpreesroae. We all

of as could recollect the shock of the collision, and a hazy idea, of being tumbled into the dinghy." "But ' couldn't you see anything?" came the sceptical question. "This thing you hit, or were hit by?" "The night was pitch black, and I don't remember a light of any kind. I have a hazy recollection of a shout, but that might have been imagination. In fact, we knew nothing distinctly till daylight came, and then the only things aßoat besides ourselves were one of our lifebuoys with Mr. Naldrett'e coat half over it, and Vboathook which I recognised as having been aboard. We brought them with us."

"H'm! Most peculiar story, Mr. Wishburn. And this passenger you took aboard ? You are aware, I suppose, that it was a serious breach of regulations?" Wiehburn admitted it faintly and a little wearily. He was wondering, if, after all, it would not have been better to have followed his torpedo vessel. For the loss was no ordinary one. The X 44 had within her dull-grey sides a new and fearful instrument of torpedo destruction, a secret'which promised to turn naval warfare inside out, and which had been of such interest to "the inquisitive families of Europe that her construction had been guarded night and day by picked men whose duty it was to set guilelesa-iooking sightseers on the proper way.

"Had you any particular reason for taking this stranger with you?" asked the Admiral.

"None whatever," came the frank confession. "When we arrived at the builders we had three days to wait before the craft was ready, and Mr. Naldrett and I met him up at a golf club at the back of the town, and found him' such a decent chap that when lie suggested he should make the trip round' with us we saw no objection."

"An absolute stranger?" put in the Admiral pitilessly. .

"Mr. Naldrett, I think, knew him at least, seemed to do."

-."Don'.t you think it rather peculiar, Mr. Wishburn, that nothing has since been heard of the appearance or nonappearance .of the vessel you say you collided with? It seems to mc Come in!" '~ : .. • ■ " .

. in!" '" r .. i An officer entered visibly throbbing ! with his news. t 'Torpedo Vessel coming tip the hart bour. Reported-to be the X 44." f It is surprising how human even grey- - haired Admirals can be at times. The . wlitde -gold-laced.conclave made for the c port window as urchins make for a dogi fight. It is currently reported that one * man, with a title and many honoured l letters to his name, lost two buttons in i the scramble, but nobody desirous of . promotion ever more than whispers it. ' And there sure enough was. the X 44 t coming gallantly up the harbour with a t flag for help at the masthead and her grey paint all a-glisten, for the I bigger part of her homecoming had- ' been in company With, half a gale. I Four solitary figures Jand another at the wheel were all that could be seen t of her people, and they most ob- ; viously were not Navy men, for their > and ragged oilskin* told a tale i of slime and tarry nets, in further testic mony whereof a clean-cut smack towed astern. Moreover, a thick black beard i" peeped out from the visor of the - helmsman, which is not usual amongst » the 'groomed and fastidioUs'"jUniors of - the British 2"favy, albeit the possessor of >. it seemed much at home with hi* task, p The Admiral, recovering his dignity, 0 snorted it the spectacular desecration, ■- and gave orders for a boat to board the I c truant Even a* he e poke, one shot into * view under his nose.v- :, Half an hour later sthe inquiry-re- '- newed it* sitting, but this time a bearded J fisherman was the central figure. He » told his tale in the dialect of his calling, 1 but clearly and without embellishment, * from his first spark of suspicion to the * final capture, a tale that bore out all that had been said by Wishbum, vrho I sat through it all like one reprieved, if wondering if hig oil-skinned. saviour "" would allow himself to be hanged. -In 1 between the pauses; Wishburn senior— 1 inscrutable as ever—but with the joy -of t heaven in his paternal heart—divided 1 his attention between the stranger and & his smack riding under-the "window. > - 'When the Admiral spoke*;, it "was for ' Naldrett. Let the defaulter be brought - aboard, and say his 5ay...7 J . "Yell ha' to do wi'out him," put in 1 the fisherman, .without a blush. "The > two sailor chaps an.th passengers aTe * aboard all right, an', the.chaps down in 1 the engines, too. I don't "smipoae they J below knaw what's for we 2 have na'- let 'em, out7-But itffficer Nalc drett managed «to win loose, an' went I o'erboard afcre ire could stop him." ' " Umph! """Jerv decent of him. Saved j us a dirty job," growled, the Admiral. ' "And now, my man, your name and "> address," please. Your evidence will be * wanted at the proper time; and if all ? this comes out true, the .Navy ,ia big in * your debt." >77 '•'•' '' '■. '• ■'■-■ . " Selby, smack -Moth, of Lindsay ' Island," answered Devine. The Admiral , wrote mechanically, glancing through the , window at the smack as he did so. Some- " thing about the little craft's.deep quart ters i arrested him jeminisccntly. < *YOur smack," he said innocently, " reminds mc of a. man ye once had in the Service. Wish he's been as patriotic asyou.".. j The fisherman coloured deeply above f his whiskers, . and TWishburn senior f looked painfully away. i. At sunset Devine and his men made ] sail for home. Their way-lay along the i coast, but they stood instead many miles t out to sea, and there,met a steamboat of Devine's acquaintance which made r weekly sailings to Morocco. Devine a hailed her and went up to see tbe cap- ; tain. When he came back he withdrew' a his forecastle door and b.-.de Ifaldrett a come forth. • •• -»i*lf? 1 "I've arranged a passage out of the 1 oountry for you," he explained. ""You 3 are dead, please remember, and Morocco J is not a difficult place to remain buried * in." ij Naldrett started and confuted^ mumbled his thanks. J "You see" said Devine "'l've been in "* gaol myself, and I don't like sending you > there, any more than I could let a 1 highly valuable warship be filched by af *! hostile nation." j I " i ****" M " M —T— 1 .