nded him, and that his swerve into the smoke had been responsible for
the dive into the sea, where the ship put the finishing touches on the
job. But from the day that the cowboy showed me that he could hit
tossed-up shillings with a target-rifle four times out of five I have
been inclined to believe his assertion that he 'plunked the bloomin'
blighter straight through the nut,' and that I and my smoke had nothing
to do with it.

"Neither the skipper nor the cowboy were much hurt, and as for the ship,
she probably suffered, in the long run, more from the loss of her paint
and oil supply than from the Hun's bomb and the fire it started."

CHAPTER XII

AGAINST ODDS

The news from all the Fronts had been discouraging for several days, and
it only needed that staggering announcement of the destruction of
practically a whole convoy and its escort, in the North Sea, to cap the
climax of gloom. This is what I had read in the fog-hastened autumn
twilight, by the feeble glow of a paint-masked street lamp, in the Stop
Press column of the evening paper a Strand newsboy had shoved into my
hand.

"Two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders attacked a convoy
in the North Sea, about midway between the Shetland Islands and the
Norwegian coast, on October 17th. Two British destroyers--H.M.
ships _Mary Rose_ (Lieutenant-Commander Charles L. Fox) and
_Strongbow_ (Lieutenant-Commander Edward Brooke)--which formed the
anti-submarine escort, at once engaged the enemy vessels, and
fought until sunk after a short and unequal engagement. Their
gallant action held the German raiders sufficiently long to enable
three of the merchant vessels to effect their escape. It is
regretted, however, that five Norwegian, one Danish, and three
Swedish vessels--all unarmed--were thereafter sunk by gunfire
without examination or warning of any kind and regardless of the
lives of their crew or passengers.... Anxious to make good their
escape before British forces could intercept them, no effort was
made to rescue the crews of the sunk British destroyers or the
doomed merchant ships, but British patrol craft which arrived
shortly afterward rescued some thirty Norwegians and others of whom
details are not yet known.... The enemy raiders succeeded in
evading the British watching squadrons on the long dark nights,
both in their hurried outward dash