like the submarines, but imitate the vices of both. A
scientist of the lower deck describes them as: "Half switchback, half
water-chute, and Hell continuous." Their only merit, from a landsman's
point of view, is that they can crumple themselves up from stem to
bridge and (I have seen it) still get home. But one does not breathe
these compliments to their commanders. Other destroyers may be--they
will point them out to you--poisonous bags of tricks, but their own
command--never! Is she high-bowed? That is the only type which
over-rides the seas instead of smothering. Is she low? Low bows glide
through the water where those collier-nosed brutes smash it open. Is
she mucked up with submarine-catchers? They rather improve her trim.
No other ship has them. Have they been denied to her? Thank Heaven,
_we_ go to sea without a fish-curing plant on deck. Does she roll,
even for her class? She is drier than Dreadnoughts. Is she permanently
and infernally wet? Stiff; sir--stiff: the first requisite of a
gun-platform.

"SERVICE AS REQUISITE"

Thus the Caesars and their fortunes put out to sea with their subs and
their sad-eyed engineers, and their long-suffering signallers--I do
not even know the technical name of the sin which causes a man to be
born a destroyer-signaller in this life--and the little yellow shells
stuck all about where they can be easiest reached. The rest of their
acts is written for the information of the proper authorities. It
reads like a page of Todhunter. But the masters of merchant-ships
could tell more of eyeless shapes, barely outlined on the foam of
their own arrest, who shout orders through the thick gloom alongside.
The strayed and anxious neutral knows them when their searchlights pin
him across the deep, or their syrens answer the last yelp of his as
steam goes out of his torpedoed boilers. They stand by to catch and
soothe him in his pyjamas at the gangway, collect his scattered
lifeboats, and see a warm drink into him before they turn to hunt the
slayer. The drifters, punching and reeling up and down their ten-mile
line of traps; the outer trawlers, drawing the very teeth of Death
with water-sodden fingers, are grateful for their low, guarded
signals; and when the Zeppelin's revealing star-shell cracks darkness
open above him, the answering crack of the invisible destroyers' guns
comforts the busy mine-layers. Big cruisers talk to them, too; and,
what is more, they talk back to the cruisers.