minutes M.L. ---- was under way and threading the
winding channels of a cliff-begirt Firth to the mist-masked waters of
the North Sea.

* * * * *

As I picked my way forward to the little glassed-in cabin, which served
the double purpose of navigating-bridge and wheel-house, I told myself
that I was sure of two things--first, that the skipper, by birth,
breeding, residence, and probably citizenship, was an American of
Americans, and, second, that the chances were he would not admit that
fact unless I "surprised him with the goods." An Englishman will often
mistake a Canadian for an American but a Yankee himself will rarely make
that error. I was sure of my man on a dozen counts, and resolved to lay
in figurative ambush for him.

I all but had him within the hour. We were clear of the Heads, and the
skipper, having turned over to Mac, was trying to forget that imperious
call o' the sea he had chaffed 'Arry about by showing me round. He had
explained the way a depth-charge was released, and was just beginning to
elaborate on the functions of an old-fashioned lance-bomb.

"Now this fellow," he said, balancing the ungainly contrivance and
giving it a gingerly twirl about his head, "is a good deal like the
sixteen-pound hammer which I used to throw at college."

Knowing that the hammer-throw was not a Canadian event, I promptly cut
in with "What college?" "Minnesota," he answered readily enough;
adding, as I began to grin: "A good many Canadians go across there for
the agricultural courses." I resolved to await a more favourable
opportunity before bringing my "charge" point-blank. It came that
afternoon, when I stood beside him on the bridge as he bucked her
through ten miles of slashing head-sea, which had to be traversed to
gain the shelter of a land-locked bay beyond a jutting point, where we
were to lie up for the night. He was telling me U-boat-chasing yarns in
the patchy intervals between the demands of _mal de mer_ and navigation,
and one of them ended something like this: "Old Fritz--just as we
intended he should--caught the reflection of the flame through his
upturned periscope and, thinking his shells had set us afire, rose
gleefully to gloat over his Hunnish handiwork. Bing! I let him have it
just like that."

The motion with which he flung the lemon he had been sucking as an
antidote for sea-sickness could not have been in the least suggestive of
what really happened; but th