to death in a snowstorm on Ben Nevis
by curling up among his sheep, and I told how I had once sheared sheep
(not mentioning it was for only half a day, and that my "clip" was
composed of about equal parts mutton and wool) on a back blocks station
in Queensland. Then he described how he had seen a big merino ram butt a
Ford car off the road up Thurso way, and I--with more finesse than
veracity--capped that with a yarn of how I had seen a flock of
Macedonian sheep blown up by a Bulgarian air-bomb, and how one of them
had landed unhurt upon a passing motor lorry load of forage--and gone
right on grazing! I reckoned that might be calculated to remind Jock of
something of the same character which had befallen him on a certain
memorable occasion, and I was not disappointed.

"'Twas verra like wha' cam ma way on the nicht the _Bow_ rammed the
_Seagull_ at the fecht aff Jutland," he commented instantly, with no
trace of suspicion in his voice. "Wad ye care to hear aboot it? Ye wud?
Weel, then----." As brief, as direct and to the point was the plain
unvarnished tale Jock Campbell told me the while a noon-day storm awoke
reverberant echoes of the Jovian thunders in the snow-caverns of Olympus
and the _Spark_ hunted down through the jade green waters of the
Thessalian coast for a U-boat that was supposed to be lurking in their
lucent depths "somewhere off Volo."

"Ah was at ma action station at the port foremost gun," he began, wiping
his perspiring brow with a wad of greasy waste, which left an undulant
trail of oil from the recoil cylinder in its wake, "when we gaed bang
into a line o' big Hun cru'sers, and we lat blaze at them and them at
us. The range was short, and wi' their serchlichts lichten us up oor
position wasna that Ah wad ca' verra pleasant. Up gaed a Hun cru'ser in
a spoort o' flame and reek, hit, Ah thocht, by a mouldie launched by
oor next astern. Ah was fair jumpin' wi' joy at the sicht, when a hale
salvo o' screechin' projes cam bang inta the fo'c'sl. Ah minded the
licht o' them mair than the soun', which was na great.

"The Huns had switched aff their serchlichts when they opened fire, so
that noo the projes was bursting in inky mirk. I doubtna oor midships
and after guns was firing, but na the foremost, for Ah dinna mind being
blinded by their licht afore the Hun projes gan bursting. My ain gun
wudna bear on the Huns, so Ah was just standing by for the time, ready
to train if we turned.

"Twa salvos cam--