hem filed a line of smart
men in blue, equipped with rifles and side arms. Twenty men and a
sergeant passed through each door, which was then closed. The ranks of
each detachment were dressed as if on parade, and when all were ready,
Dawson gave a sharp order. Instantly forty-two rifle-butts clashed as
one upon the floor, and the Marines stood at ease. At this moment the
door at the far end might have been seen to open, and an officer to
slip in who, though white of hair, had not apparently reached a higher
rank than that of lieutenant. "It was all very fine, Dawson," he
explained afterwards, "your plan of leaving me outside with the rest
of the Marines, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't come north to be
buried in the reserves."

"You should have obeyed orders," replied Dawson severely.

"I should," cheerfully assented the Colonel-Commandant of Chatham,
"but somehow I didn't."

While Dawson's body-guard of Marines was getting into position before
the doors, the workmen, surprised and trapped, were on their feet
chattering and gesticulating. The unfamiliar appearance of the
blue-uniformed men, not one of whom was less than five feet nine
inches in height, their well-set-up figures and stolid professional
faces, gave a business-like, even ominous flavour to the proceedings
which chilled the strike leaders to the bone. They would have cheered
an irruption of kilted recruits in khaki tunics as the coming of old
friends, and would have felt no more than local patriotic hostility
towards a detachment of English or Irish soldiers. But these blue men
of the Sea Regiment, an integral part of the great mysterious silent
Navy, had no part or lot with British workmen "rightly struggling to
be free." They represented some outside authority, some potent,
overpowering authority, as no khaki-clad soldiers could have
represented it. The surprise was complete, the moral effect was
staggering, and Dawson, who had counted upon both when he brought his
Marines north, smiled contentedly to himself. He stepped forward, with
that little slip of paper in his hand, and began to read from it. One
by one he read out twenty-three names, the very first being that of
the man who had made the speech which I have reported.

As name after name dropped from Dawson's lips, the wonder and terror
grew. Who was this strange officer who could thus surely divide the
goats from the sheep, who was picking out one after another the
self-seekers and fomente