body was hauled aboard, but the shock
or the cold had here taken its toll.

The sea around was searched in vain for further survivors. A few planks,
a signal locker, a broken life-raft and a meat-safe were all that was
left of the trawler _Mayflower_, homeward bound from Iceland to Grimsby.

A silence seemed to brood over the patrol boat as she slowly picked her
way out of the mine-field. The crew went about their tasks without the
usual jests and snatches of song, and the pudding, which but a few short
hours before had seemed the most important event of the day, lay
unheeded on the floor of the galley, where it had been thrown by the
cook in the haste for hot water.

In the failing light of the December afternoon the bow of the patrol
boat was turned shorewards, and, with a rising sea curling up astern,
she raced through the slate-grey water with her burden of living and
dead. It was one of those moments which call for a rapid decision on a
difficult point, when the order had to be given for the course to be
laid for harbour, and the C.O., cold and miserably wet after seven hours
on the bridge, wore an anxious look. He knew not which had the greater
claim, the desperately wounded man in the cabin or other ships which
might bear down on the mine-field during the long bitter night. It was a
point on which the rules of war and the dictates of humanity clashed.

Again the ship was turned into the rapidly darkening east, and all
through that bitter night the field of death was guarded. Stiffened
fingers flashed out the warning signal when black hulls loomed out of
the darkness. Numbed limbs clung for dear life when green seas washed
the tiny decks, and when dawn broke over the waste of tumbling sea the
men on M.L.822 knew that Christmas Day, 1916, would live for ever in
their memory.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DERELICT

THERE are few things more heart-breaking than sea patrol, which forms
the principal duty of anti-submarine fleets. Hours, days and even months
may pass with nothing to relieve the monotony of grey sea and sky, with
occasional glimpses of wave-tossed ships.

There are, of course, intervening periods in harbour, when fierce gales
howl overhead, and guard duty on rain-swept quaysides, or sentry-go in
blinding snowstorms, comes almost as a relief from the sameness of
winter days on northern seas.

It is, however, the unexpected which generally occurs in war, and during
those terrible winters from 1914