lity. But in the case of a ship in which he has
sailed--lived in, worked and played in, been happy in, perhaps gone
through certain dangers in--has more than a personality, it has a place
in his heart. Many and many a morning since the first U-boat campaign
was started I had read--and never without a lump rising in my throat--of
the passing of just such a friend, of the going out of the world of
something--almost of "some one"--which I had always looked forward to
seeing again. _Afric_, _Arabic_, _Aragon_, I knew their names well
enough to compile the list alphabetically. It would have run to some
score in length, and from every name would have led a long train of
treasured memories. But the blow had never come quite this way before,
never fallen quite so near at home. An especially dear friend had just
been stricken less than a degree of latitude away; but the poignancy of
that realisation was tempered by the thought that I was in a ship
rushing to her assistance, a ship that could be as swift to succour as
to avenge.

I must confess to a queerly mixed state of mind that next half-hour.
Consumed as I was with interest in our terribly purposeful progress
leading up to the entrance into that grim drama approaching its
climacteric act just beyond the sky-line, there were also vivid
flare-backs of memory to the days of my friendship with the _Marmora_,
arresting flashlights of the swift refreshing morning dive into the
canvas pool on her forecastle, of lounging chairs ranged in long rows
'twixt snowy decks and awnings, of a phosphorescent bow-wave curling
back and blotting the reflections of stars in a tropical sea. There was
a picture of the clean sweet lines of her as--buff, black, and
beautiful--she lay at the north end of the horseshoe of the Circular
Quay at Sydney, with a rakish Messageries liner moored astern of her and
a bluff Norddeutscher Lloyd packet ahead. It was her maiden voyage, and
Australia, which had never seen so swift and luxurious a liner before,
was receiving her like a newly arrived _prima donna_. I took passage in
her back as far as Colombo. That fortnight's voyage had been diverting
in a number of ways, I recalled, but most of all, perhaps, as a
consequence of the throwing together of a large party of Wesleyan
missionaries from Fiji and the members of a London musical comedy
company returning from its Australian "triumphs." I was just beginning
to chuckle inwardly at the recollection of what one of