ing future ones with a nonchalance bred
of daily rubbing shoulders with danger and death. Snatches of popular
music hall songs penetrated the closed hatchways, but were drowned by
the splash of the sea against the ship's side.

This silent battle with monotony, bitter cold and drenching showers of
spray, with several numbing hours on deck, followed by an equal time
lying on the bunks below--still cold and wet, for fires and dry clothes
were almost unknown in the patrol boats during the long winter months in
the cruel northern seas--might have lasted all day, until darkness and
increasing cold added their quota to the sum of misery, and the day
patrol crept silently into harbour, to be relieved by their brethren of
the night guard.

But such was not to be, for it was a Christmas Day that will live for
ever in the memory of the men on Patrol Launch No. 822, to be recalled
in the peaceful years ahead to eager listeners at many a fireside.

Two bells in the afternoon watch had barely struck when from out of the
haze ahead came a low reverberating boom! The three figures on the
bridge stiffened to alertness and the chilled blood went coursing more
warmly through their veins. A few seconds of strained listening,
rewarded only by the noise of the sea, then the telegraph was moved
forward, a sharp jangle of bells came from the engine-room and
forecastle and the slow pulsating of the motors grew to a loud roar. The
watch below came tumbling on to the wet deck, to be lashed with clouds
of blinding, stinging spray, which now flew high over the little ship as
the 400-horse-power engines drove her at 18 knots through the grey,
misty seas.

Experience had made that dull roar familiar to all on board, and it
needed no order from the now hard-faced C.O. to cause every man to don
his "capuc" life-belt in readiness for the hidden dangers which they
knew to be strewn in the pathways of the sea ahead.

Mines are moored at a given depth below the surface, usually from six to
ten feet. The rise and fall of the tide, therefore, either increases or
decreases the stratum of free water above them. This causes these
invisible submarine weapons to be more dangerous to shallow-draught
vessels, such as motor patrol launches, at low tide, when there is
little water between the tops of their horns and the surface, than at
high tide. More will, however, be said in a later chapter about mines
and the difficulties of laying them.

It so happened t