r when he's roused. He wouldn't stick a moment at pitching a
chap of your sort overboard if he thought fit. No!... They've shoved you
on to me, but it's my cabin, you know."

"I won't forget," said Bert.

Kurt left him, and when he came to look about him the first thing he saw
pasted on the padded wall was a reproduction, of the great picture by
Siegfried Schmalz of the War God, that terrible, trampling figure with
the viking helmet and the scarlet cloak, wading through destruction,
sword in hand, which had so strong a resemblance to Karl Albert, the
prince it was painted to please.

CHAPTER V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC

1

The Prince Karl Albert had made a profound impression upon Bert. He was
quite the most terrifying person Bert had ever encountered. He filled
the Smallways soul with passionate dread and antipathy. For a long time
Bert sat alone in Kurt's cabin, doing nothing and not venturing even
to open the door lest he should be by that much nearer that appalling
presence.

So it came about that he was probably the last person on board to hear
the news that wireless telegraphy was bringing to the airship in throbs
and fragments of a great naval battle in progress in mid-Atlantic.

He learnt it at last from Kurt.

Kurt came in with a general air of ignoring Bert, but muttering to
himself in English nevertheless. "Stupendous!" Bert heard him say.
"Here!" he said, "get off this locker." And he proceeded to rout out two
books and a case of maps. He spread them on the folding-table, and stood
regarding them. For a time his Germanic discipline struggled with his
English informality and his natural kindliness and talkativeness, and at
last lost.

"They're at it, Smallways," he said.

"At what, sir?" said Bert, broken and respectful.

"Fighting! The American North Atlantic squadron and pretty nearly
the whole of our fleet. Our Eiserne Kreuz has had a gruelling and is
sinking, and their Miles Standish--she's one of their biggest--has sunk
with all hands. Torpedoes, I suppose. She was a bigger ship than the
Karl der Grosse, but five or six years older. Gods! I wish we could see
it, Smallways; a square fight in blue water, guns or nothing, and all of
'em steaming ahead!"

He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he delivered a lecture on the
naval situation to Bert.

"Here it is," he said, "latitude 30 degrees 50 minutes N. longitude 30
degrees 50 minutes W. It's a good day off us, anyhow, and