lken line out across the peat-brown water.

In an adjoining compartment a Lieutenant of the Naval Reserve sat at
one end facing a Lieutenant of the Volunteer Reserve, while a small
Midshipman, effaced behind a magazine, occupied the other corner.
Conversation, stifled by ham sandwiches, restarted fitfully, and
flagged from train weariness. Darkness pursued the whirling landscape
and blotted it out. Sleep overtook the majority of the travellers
until the advent of tea baskets at the next stopping place revived them
to a more lively interest in life and one another.

The Reserve Lieutenant fussed over his like a woman. "I wouldn't
trouble if I never smelt whisky again," he confided to his vis-a-vis,
"but I couldn't get on without tea." He helped himself to three lumps
of sugar.

The ice thinned rapidly.

"With fresh milk," said the Volunteer Reserve man appreciatively,
pouring himself out a cup. "Eh, Jennings?"

The Midshipman, thus addressed, grinned and applied himself in silence
to a scone and jam.

"Ah," said the Reserve man with a kind of tolerance in his tone, such
as a professional might extend to the enthusiasm of an amateur in his
own trade. "Cows scarce in your job?"

"A bit," was the unruffled reply. "We've just brought a Norwegian
wind-jammer in from the South of Iceland...." He indicated with a nod
the young gentleman in the corner, who was removing traces of jam from
his left cheek. "I'm bringing the armed guard back to our base."

The Reserve man drank his tea after the manner of deep-sea sailor-men.
That is to say, you could shut your eyes and still know: he was
drinking hot tea.

"Armed Merchant-cruiser squadron?" he queried. Imperceptibly his tone
had changed. The Armed Merchant-cruisers maintain the Allied blockade
across the trade routes of the Far North: "fancy" sailor-men do not
apply for jobs in one of these amazons of the North Sea, and it takes
more than a Naval uniform to bring a suspect sailing ship many miles
into port for examination under an armed guard of four men.

The Volunteer nodded. "We had a picnic, I can tell you. It blew like
hell from the N.E., and the foretopmast--she was a barque--went like a
carrot the second day. We hove to, trying to rig a jury mast, when up
popped a Fritz."[1] The speaker laughed, a pleasant, deep laugh of
complete enjoyment. "I thought we were in for a swim that would knock
the cross-Channel record silly! However, I borrowed a suit