ng it that we
have piled up since. At our first convoys, straggling and little
schooled in looking after themselves, he used to take a chance as often
as not, if he happened to sight them; but even then he rarely got back
to tell what happened to him. There was the one that tried to celebrate
the advent of 'Peace-on-Earth-Good-Will-to-Men' last Christmas Day by
sinking the _Amperi_, which was one of a convoy the _Whack_ (in which I
was Number Two at the time) was helping to escort. Well, I couldn't say
much for his 'Good-Will-toward-Men,' but he certainly found a short cut
to 'Peace-on-Earth,' or at least the bottom of the sea.

"Now that chap took a real sporting chance, and got his reward for
it--both ways. I mean to say, that he sunk the ship he went after all
right--which was his reward one way; and that we then sunk him--which
was his reward the other way. There was a funny coincidence in
connection with that little episode which might amuse you. We were----"

He paused for a moment while he spelled out for himself the "Visual"
which one of the escorting destroyers was flashing to the convoy leader,
but presently, with a smile of pleased reminiscence, took up the thread
of his yarn. This is the story that young Sub-Lieutenant P----, R.N.R.,
told me the while we leaned on the lee rail of the bridge and watched
the passing of those miles-long lines of packed troopers as, silently
sure of purpose, superbly contemptuous of danger, they steamed steadily
on to deliver their cargoes of human freight one step further towards
the fulfilment of its destiny.

"It was Christmas Day, as I told you," he said, bracing comfortable
against the roll, "and a cold, blustering, windy day it was. Several
days previously we had picked up a small slow convoy off a West African
port, and were escorting it to a port on the West Coast of England. The
escort consisted only of the _Whack_ and the _Smack_, the skipper of the
latter, as the senior officer, being in command. None of the ships--they
were mostly slow freighters--had had much convoy experience to speak of
at the time, and we were having our hands full all the way keeping them
in any kind of formation. They seemed to be getting worse rather than
better in this respect as we got into the waters where U-boat attacks
might be expected, but this may have been largely due to the weather,
which was--well, about the usual mid-winter brand in those latitudes. In
fact, we were just becoming