ail Packets, collier mates,
freighter captains, cross-Channel skippers, we are at ease together in a
common cause; on one bench in the classroom may be seafarers returned
from foreign ports as widely distant as Shanghai and Valparaiso.

For instruction in gunnery and the use of special apparatus we come
under tuition of a type of seaman whom we had not met before. If the
backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man, the petty officer of
the Royal Navy is no less the marrow of his Service. Unfortunately, we
have no one like him in the Merchants' Service. As Scots is the language
of marine engines, the South of England accent may be that of the guns.
That liquid ue! "Metal adapters, genelmen, luek. Metal adapters is made o'
alueminium bronze. They are bored houet t' take a tuebe, an' threaded on
th' houetside t' screw into th' base o' th' cartridge case--like this
'ere. Genelmen, luek. . . ." His intelligent demonstration of the gear
and working of the types of our armament possesses a peculiar quality,
as though he is trying hard to reduce his exposition to our level. (As a
matter of plain fact, he is.)

The instructional course closes on a note of confidence. We learn that
even 'inexorable circumstance' has an opening to skilled evasion. We go
afloat for a day and put into practice some measure of our schooling. At
fire-control, with the guns, we exercise in an atmosphere of din and
burnt cardboard, aiming at a hit with the fifth shot in sequence of our
bracket. (An earlier bull's-eye would be bad application of our
lectures.) A smoke-screen is set up for our benefit, and we turn and
twist in the artificially produced fumes and vapours in a practical
demonstration of defence. A sea-going submarine is in attendance and is
open to our inspection. Her officers augment the class instruction by
actual showing. Every point in the maze of an under-water attack is
emphasized by them in an effort to impress us with the virtue of the
counter-measures advised. It must be hard indeed for the submarine
enthusiast (and they are all enthusiasts) to lay bare the 'weaknesses'
of his loved machine. We feel for them almost as if we heard a man,
under pressure, admit that his last ship was unseaworthy.

[Illustration: THE LOSS OF A LINER]

III

THE LONGSHORE VIEW

EARLY in November 1914, on return from the sea, I was invited to join
His Majesty's Forces.

". . . An' I can tell you this, mister," said the sergeant . . .