as being tempered in the furnace of war.

To those in northern seas came the blinding sleet, the slate-grey
combers and the innumerable hardships and dangers of winter patrol. A
better idea of what these really were will be obtained from the
following account of a Christmas spent on a German mine-field.

* * * * *

A bitter wind swept the grey wastes of the North Sea and a fine haze of
snow, driven by stinging gusts, obscured all except the long hillocks of
water which rose and fell around the tiny M.L.--a lonely thirty tons of
nautical humanity in as many square leagues of sub-Arctic sea.

Nineteen degrees of frost during the long winter night had flattened the
boisterous, foam-capped waves, and now, in the early December dawn, all
within vision was of that colourless grey so familiar to those who kept
the North Sea on the winter patrol.

It was one bell in the first watch and three shapeless figures clad in
duffel coats with big hoods and wearing heavy sea-boots stood silent in
the draughty, canvas-screened wheel-house as M.L.822 wallowed northwards
through the seas which came in endless succession out of the snowy mist.
It was just the ordinary everyday patrol duty, when nothing was expected
but anything might happen, so eyes were strained seawards in a vain
endeavour to penetrate the icy curtain blowing down from the Pole.
Twelve hours more of half-frozen existence stretched in front of these
silent watchers, as they clung with stiffened limbs to ropes stretched
purposely handy to keep them upright when the little ship lurched more
fiercely in a steeper sea.

Of the three figures in the meagre shelter of the wheel-house there was
little to distinguish who or what they were, except, perhaps, a cleaner
and more yellowish duffel coat and a big white muffler in which the
lieutenant-in-command tried, without success, to keep his teeth from
chattering and the icy draught from finding its way into the seemingly
endless openings of his woollen clothing. What he had been before the
Great War and the North Sea claimed him was a mystery to those on board,
but the people of more than one capital knew his name. Near by stood a
younger man--a boy before the war--who, although pale and dark-eyed, did
not appear to feel the intense cold so much, although the dampness of
the long-past summer fogs had chilled him to the bone. He was the
sub-lieutenant, and hailed from the Great North-West, where Ca