warship than
an air-bomb of ten times that weight expending its force more or less
harmlessly upon an upper deck.

Merchant ships, with their inflammable and comparatively flimsy upper
works, are more vulnerable to air-bombs than are warships, but even of
these very few indeed have been completely destroyed as a consequence
of aerial attack. Some of the gamest fights of the war on the sea have
been those of merchant skippers who, in the days before their ships had
guns of any description to keep aircraft at a distance, brought their
vessels through by the exercise of the boundless resource which
characterises their kind, usually by sheer skill in manoeuvring. A
very remarkable instance of this character I heard of a few days ago
from a Royal Naval Reserve officer who figured in it.

"I was in a British ship temporarily in the Holland-South American
service at the time," he said, "and we were outward bound from Rotterdam
after discharging a cargo of wheat from Montevideo. It was before the
Huns had raised any objection to ships bound for Dutch ports using the
direct route by the English Channel, and also before the U-boats had
begun to sink neutrals on that run. Except for the comparatively slight
risk of encountering a floating mine, we reckoned we were just about as
safe in the North Sea as in the South Atlantic. Of course, we carried no
gun of any kind--no heavy gun, I mean. We _did_ have a rifle or two, as
I will tell you of presently.

"Why the attack was made we never had any definite explanation. In fact,
the Germans themselves probably never knew, for they tumbled over
themselves to assure the Holland Government that there was some
misunderstanding, and that they would undertake that nothing of the
kind should occur again.

"My personal opinion has always been that it was a sheer case of running
amuck on the part of the Hun aviator responsible for the outrage; for,
as I have said, we were empty of cargo, our marks were unmistakable, and
we were steering a course several points off the one usually followed by
the Dutch boats to England. Anyway, he paid the full penalty for his
descent to barbarism.

"It was a clear afternoon, with a light wind and lighter sea, and we
were steaming comfortably along at about nine knots, heading for the
Straits of Dover, when the look-out at the mast-head reported a squadron
of 'planes approaching from the south.

"Presently we sighted them from the bridge--five seaplanes, t