of congealed moisture that seemed to have been
chipped from the glassy steel dome of the now cloudless sky. There was a
filigree of frost masking the wheel-house windows before the early
winter night clapped down its lid, and the men who went forward to pass
a line through the ring of the mooring-buoy pawed the icy deck with
their stiff-soled sea-boots without making much more horizontal progress
than a squirrel treading its wheel.

It would have been bracing enough if there had been a cheery open fire,
or at least a glowing little sheet-iron stove, to thaw and dry out at,
as there is on most patrol craft, and even on many trawlers. But in the
particular type to which M.L. ---- belonged (the units of which are said
to have been built in fulfilment of a rush order given one winter on
the assumption that the War would be over before the next) there was no
refinements and few comforts. Heating is not included among the latter:
the only stove in the boat being in the galley, where the drying of wet
togs in restricted quarters is responsible for a queer but strangely
familiar taste to the pea-soup and Irish stew which you never quite
account for until you discover the line of grease on the corner of the
tail of your oilskin or the toe of your sea-boot.

The diminutive electric heaters are true to the first part of their name
rather than the last: that is to say, while they are undeniably
electric, it is equally certain that they do not heat. There _is_ a
certain amount of warmth in them, as I discovered the time I scorched my
blankets by taking one to bed with me; but that is of use only when you
can confine it and apply locally, which is rarely practicable in a small
craft at sea, even when you have the time for it.

It will be readily understood, therefore, why on a M.L., at sea in
really wintry weather, the only alternative to sitting up and being
slowly but surely chilled to the marrow is to doff wet togs as soon as
you come off watch, don dry ones, bolt your dinner, and turn in. This is
just what we had to do on M.L. ---- that night; for, besides the really
intense cold, a sea which came through the sky-light of the little
dining-cabin early in the afternoon had drenched cushions and curtains,
with enough left over to form an inch or two of swashing swirl upon the
deck. Poor 'Arry, with the effects of the "call o' the sea" still
showing in his hollow eyes and pasty cheeks, was not in shape to do much
either in the wa