here was a fleet of steam-trawlers handled by their old fishing
captains and crews, whose special duty it was to sweep up the waters
just outside the harbor for mines. It was at that time a dangerous
business, but it was also monotonous. It was a duty most easy to evade.

Who was to say they had not swept up? No cove at a naval base five
hundred miles away, that was sure! Even if mines were found there after
they reported it swept clear, what would that prove? The Huns were
laying mines all the time, weren't they? So--war days are hard enough
anyway--why not ease up now and again?

They eased up. Many a snug little place there was along the coast where
a crew could go ashore and have a pleasant time for a day or two. There
were reports to fill out, but what were reports? Ship a clerk in the
crew and who would know? Surely not some aide at the naval base who
spent his busiest hours taking the admiral's niece to tea fights!

The British public will probably stand more from their lawfully ordained
rulers than any other public on earth. They stood for a good many ships
being mined on that coast before they began to ask the why of it.

The powers returned with facts and figures, percentage tables, and so
on, of ships departing and ships arriving; proving clearly that the
number of ships lost was no more than was to be expected. Whereupon the
British public took to writing letters to the press. British politicians
take letters to the press seriously; a new man, the admiral we have been
talking of, was sent to take charge of the district.

He got down to business. He fitted out a 30-knot despatch-boat and away
he went! All along that coast he pounced in on little harbors where
mine-sweepers should be found working outside, but where he found them
working mostly inside at little sociable gatherings where there was a
dance or the like going on in front and a little something nourishing to
drink in back. Our stern and efficient admiral lit into them like a gull
into a school of herring. Out by their gills he hauled them, and pretty
soon the B. P. began to read less of percentages and more of results.

One of the first results was that some trawler skippers lost their jobs,
and new skippers took their places. This was at the time that rewards of
five pounds or so were offered the skippers bringing a mine into port.

That five pounds looked pretty good to one of the new skippers; and when
one night at a pub a discharged skippe