Chapter VI: Rejoining at Once

We will call him Plough--Lieutenant John B. Plough, R.N.--because that name is not in the Navy List, and his own is. He had been on special leave at Marienbad "on urgent private affairs," which in less technical English might be explained as an expedition to that German health resort with a view of inspecting a girl he had danced with twice at home, and trying to persuade her that her mission in life was to become Mrs. Plough. And from this idyllic occupation he had been torn by a bald telegram which commanded him to "Rejoin at Once."

He wondered vaguely what was up. He had not seen an English paper for a week, and could not read German, and had heard no word about the threatened war. But he was too good an officer to question such an order. He packed his traps, saw the girl, explained the case to her in ten words, kissed her rapturously, much to her surprise, and just caught the 5.40, without having time to register his luggage. Thereafter began his troubles.

The train lagged minutes, and half-hours, and hours behind scheduled time, and finally gave up its attempt altogether. An order was passed for "All turn out." The line was commandeered for troops. Civil traffic must go round by so-and-so and so-and-so, which were apparently German junctions further east, but nobody seemed to have heard of them before. A train for that route would leave in six hours' time.

It was fifteen hours before that train got started, and even when it was under way a mule tram could have beaten it for speed. John B. Plough, being a Naval man, arrived in the train clean-shaven, well-fed, and rested. The balance of the passengers were be-draggled, and cross, and tired. Plough gave up his window seat in a first-class carriage to a middle-aged Englishwoman with a capable face, and went and stood in the corridor.

The train travelled on single lines through a country unknown to English tourists, and stopped at innumerable stations at which the platforms were all full of excited people. But progress northwards to the coast was sure if it was slow. At intervals officials, not belonging to the railway, came into the carriages and stared rudely at the passengers. They passed insolent eyes over all non-Germans--especially the women--and made notes in pocket-books which seemed to amuse them. Certain of the fathers and husbands and brothers got annoyed, and said things, though this did not in the least abate the nuisance. J.B. Plough said nothing. He wanted to get home.

Finally the train drew in to the outskirts of a Port--what Port must be left vague here, for reasons which will appear--and official vigilance increased. A spectacled man in uniform--everybody seemed to be in uniform here--came into the carriage with six aggressively armed soldiers at his heels.

"Passports?"

They none of them had one. An American, with dry humour, explained that Cooks had told him passports were only needed now in the uncivilized parts of Europe.

"Arrest all these pig-dogs," said the official, and went on to the next carriage. And arrested they were--children, women, and men.

Thereafter came a most galling part of the exodus. The streets of the Sea Port were crammed with people, troops for the most part, and all jeered and hooted as the prisoners were marched through them. The officer of their escort seemed to possess little of the boasted German order and method. He dragged them from office to office, and from prison to prison, arguing and expostulating with the keepers of each, and every time being sent on somewhere else. The prisoners lagged and expostulated, but the bayonets of the escorts pressed them into movement, and the weak ones limped along as best they could. Plough had a child on his back, and the middle-aged Englishwoman he had talked to in the train, on his arm, by the time they reached a destination that seemed a final one.

This looked a private house, was in the Wilhelm Strasse, and turned out to be their captor's personal residence. He proceeded to arrange the forty prisoners in front of him and pompously to examine them.

The majority claimed to be, and probably were, Americans, and produced letters and other documents to prove it. Also being tired and angry, they told him exactly what the little old United States would do when their President got busy, and woke up to the fact of his insignificant existence.

This being patently true, probably frightened Jack-in-Office, but like Pharaoh of old it also hardened his heart, and he refused to let them go. So they were herded apart for the time being in another room, with a couple of fixed bayonets to keep them soothed. The French were similarly filtered out, insulted, and set apart. There remained Plough, and the middle-aged woman of the train whose name he did not know.

"Names?" They gave them.

"English?" Certainly.

"What relation to one another?"

"None," said Plough.

"Liar," said Jack. "You are son and mother. I have seen you arm in arm."

"Evidence seems hardly conclusive," suggested the Naval man, who was used to sifting testimony.

The lady coloured with annoyance at being thought old enough to have such a strapping son.

"Zo! You show confusion, because I haf der truth discovered. You shall be shut up together, and if I had my way, on to-morrow you should be shot, you treacherous pig-dogs of English that dare to make war on Germany. Away with dem."

Shut up together they were, in a small bare room at the top of the house, but the supply of bayonet-bearers having run out of stock, a locked door was considered enough for them.

Plough went to the window. "Phew! four stories from the ground, and not so much as a fall-pipe to climb down by. And we're at war with Germany, by gad, and I'm here."

"And you're in the Navy?" said madam.

"How did you find that out?"

"Well, for one thing you carry your trade mark about with you plainly, and for another you were walking about Marienbad with a young lady who is a customer of mine, and I asked who you were and got told."

"Sorry I didn't see you at Marienbad."

"Not at all. We are in different sets, and likely to remain so. But we've got an interest in common. We both want to get out of here. You, I presume, wish to rejoin your ship. I have a big millinery business in Bradford that will go to pieces if I'm not there to look after it; and I've two daughters, too, who will want me, though," she added as a tart afterthought, "they aren't anywhere near so old as you."

"Eh?" said Plough, who didn't quite follow this last on the spur of the moment. "Oh, I see. Yes, it was pretty beastly rude of that bumptious ass downstairs. Now, if he'd only guessed us as brother and sister, what?"

"That would have been quite as impossible as the other," said madam uncompromisingly. "Let's get to the point. You, I suppose, would risk a good deal to get home?"

"I'd risk my neck," said the sailor simply. "But I don't see any way out of this room."

"Well, I do. The question is, if I help you out of here will you take me along with you as far as you go?"

"I shouldn't care to risk it. You see, pardon my putting it bluntly, but you're a woman."

"I've reason to suspect it. But when it isn't a case of walking, which I frankly admit I can't do in these absurd shoes, I'm tougher than most men. Come now, Mr. Plough, I know the way out and you don't. Will you take me?"

Lieutenant John B. Plough hesitated for a moment, frankly looking madam over. Then, "it's a deal," said he, "and if anything happens to you--well, it'll have happened to me first. Now, where's the way out?"

"Through that door."

"Door. Why, my good lady, that's wall."

"Also door. It's papered like the rest of the wall, but I noticed the keyhole, and whilst you were staring out of window I opened it. It leads to the next house."

"And after we get there, what then?"

"I leave that to you, partner," said madam, giving him the State curtsy she taught to customers who bought Presentation Gowns.

John B. Plough's grin wrinkled up his face. "Madam," said he, "you're a daisy. The Lord, He only knows what amount of Hoch-der-Kaisers there are in the next house, and if we're caught we're liable to be tried for anything between simony and arson; but if you're game to come with me, I'm game to take you. And, blow me, if you'll teach me stitching I'll teach you sailoring."

"Go on into that house," said madam, "and don't talk twaddle. I want to get home to my work."

The passage of the next house proved to be the easiest thing imaginable. They went inside, found the stair, and crept down it like cats to the next landing. They were undisturbed. They crept down the next flight, and the next, and--the next, and stood in a barbarously furnished hall, full of light from raw electrics. There was not a sound or a whisper in the whole house.

"All out bean-feasting," said Plough, "and arranging which estates they'll have when they have taken England. Come along, partner."

"Madam, please," said the lady, and pulled the latch of the front door.

"Half a minute. Do you know this city?"

"I don't even know the name of it."

"H'm, I'm ahead of you there. It's----. Now let me worry out where we are and how the river-front lies. Don't speak for at least fifteen seconds.... Right, I've got it. We must bear east with a bit of north in it. Salt water's my pigeon, and as we've got to cross it to get home, we may as well make for it at once. Now let me open that door, part--madam, and we'll get under way."

Wilhelm Strasse, when they stepped out into it, closing the house door behind them, was a mere crowd of people. All were talking, and most looked important. A German occupies far more standing-room for an ordinary conversation than is sufficient for the Briton, by reason of his language being obscure and the necessity of eking it out by dumb show, and when his hand semaphoring is cramped by a crowd, it is enough to irritate him at once.

"Madam," said John B. Plough with an explanatory wave that was really a very passable imitation of the genuine article, "you've got to carry in your head the bed-rock fact that these people are all as mad as hay, and if they drop to the fact that you come from Bradford, England, they're just as likely as not to lynch you. Do you speak German?"

"Not a word."

"Quite right. It's a filthy language. But you mustn't let any one hear a word of even your worst English. Happy thought--we're both deaf and dumb."

"I don't even know the deaf and dumb alphabet."

"Nor do I. But we're the educated kind with a sort of Admiralty code of our own. Madam, I'm not joking; you must look serious and keep it up."

The next street was quieter; and the next street after which they branched into was quieter still.

"I do feel lonely out of that crowd," muttered Plough. "This is just the place for some busy ass to spot us for what we are. Keep it up, madam. Here are two heroes coming across the road to ask why and wherefore."

Two men came and planted themselves firmly across the pavement, and put questions in rapid German. Plough replied in his best imitation deaf and dumb. One of the Germans rocked with laughter. The other said spitefully: "Zo! English spies. We will take you to the polis."

"I doubt it," said John B. Plough, and laid stringent hands on the outside ear of each, and bumped their heads violently together.

The two inquirers collapsed into a limp heap on the pavement. Plough plucked the lady by the arm, and ran with her round the next corner, and the next corner after that.

And then: "You really must try and talk more realistic deaf and dumb, madam," said he, "or you will get us into bad trouble presently."

"That's right, lay the blame on me," said she rather breathlessly. "How like a man!"

"I'm sorry your first wasn't a success," said John B. Plough with a grin, "but there may be better times coming. Cheer up, madam. Here's the water front. Now we'll begin to move."

They stood on the string-piece of a wharf, looking upstream and down, through an opalescent river-mist; and to them, up some weed-covered steps, there suddenly arrived a man in uniform. He stopped, stared at them, and then cried: "Zo, und again, Eenglish."

"Well, don't make a song about it," said Plough.

"You admeet? Zo! Den you come along mit me."

"Got an appointment elsewhere," said Plough, and clipped the man under the jaw. He tripped backwards over the string piece, and fell with a splash into the river.

"He'll drown," said madam, shivering.

"He probably will if he can't swim," said Plough philosophically. "He should have thought of that before he started being impertinent to a comparative stranger. These Germans always are so unmannerly. But he's left a boat tied up at the bottom of these stairs, and I guess we'd better use it. Mind your skirts against the weed and the mud, and for the Lord's sake don't skid."

"You go first," said madam, "and help me down."

The boat, once it was cast off from the stairs, swung down stream, and in the charge of a strong ebb, sped away towards the river's mouth. They whirled past half a dozen destroyers, which blazed with light, and were alive with men.

"I thought we should have been stopped there," said the sailor, "but there's evidently nothing doing. And we're told in the text-books to look up to the business methods of these Germans. Got your wind back yet, madam?"

"You look after the boat, and never mind me. Why are you going stern first?"

"Because I can see better front ways than through the back of my head. The ebb's taking us five knots, and that's quite fast enough for a clumsy tub like this. We shall be coming across shipping hung up to moorings soon, if they haven't removed the buoys. I want to try my soft eloquence on the packet that's nearest the sea."

The fairway was full enough of life. Big steamers were coming up for sanctuary against British raiders; coasting craft whose business was ended, were hunting for mud berths; and a tug in charge of the last four-masted sailing ship that was to win home for many disastrous months, hooted dismally to show her importance. And moving amongst these were the launches and picket boats of an anxious Navy. The small rowing boat with its two occupants was far too insignificant an object for notice amongst hurrying interests such as these. At last they drifted down to the line of the outer moorings, and found there one steamer, where in normal times there would have been twenty.

"A hulking 2000-ton collier, with the coal still in her," announced Plough. "Kind of ship they build on Tyneside by the mile, and cut off in lengths as ordered, and stick a bulkhead across the ends for bow and stern. She's no accommodation ladder, madam. Can you climb a Jacob's stair-case?"

The lady bit her lips. "I'll have to. I must get home."

"Mind your eye, then," said Plough, and ran his boat alongside. He made fast his painter to a dangling davit fall, and helped madam up the uneasy ladder. A fat man appeared from above and handed her over the rail. Plough followed, and addressed him.

"You the master?"

"Captain's ashore, if that's what you mean."

"Ah, yes, of course, he would be."

"He was fetched by the police."

"Like them, the busy brutes. I see you've steam. Well, we'll get under way at once."

"Look here, mister man, I'm mate of this packet, and in charge, and I'm the one that gives the orders. Who the hell are you?"

"I am Lieutenant J.B. Plough, of the Navy, and I've come here to take you home, because you don't seem able to do it yourself. Call up the chief engineer to let me know the instant he can give me full steam, and then you can unshackle from the buoy and we'll be off."

The fat mate scratched his nose with a dirty finger nail. "And you--as representing the Navy--assume all responsibility?"

"Any God's quantity of it. Now get a move on, Mr. Mate, or we shall have the German Fleet round here presently wanting us to sign a stack more of official forms in triplicate."

"The Lord preserve us from any more documents," said the mate piously, and jumped for the engine-room.

Steam was ready for full speed--which was nine knots--and the chief himself brought word that in half an hour's time he "could whack her up to nine-point-five."

"Been in the Navy myself, sir," he added, "as a tiffy, and glad enough to rejoin again if you can get us home out of this. If I may suggest, sir, the lady had better have my room. The old man's cabin is hardly decent. He's papered it with portraits of his lost loves till there isn't space left for so much as a shaving-glass."

"Make it so," said Plough. "And, Mr. Mate, when I take the strain off her with the engines, just unshackle from the buoy with as little noise as you can manage. If you started playing a tune with your windlass, we'd have some one coming to inquire why. They're a desperate lot of busybodies up there at the Port."

The unwieldy collier was, of course, lying head up stream. Lieut. Plough jockeyed her round between the narrow limits of the fairway, and then rammed down the handles of his engine-room telegraph to full speed ahead, and set a course for home. Then he began to equip ship and crew for war.

He tackled the crew first. Could any of them speak German fluently? Two of them did--for the very sound reason that they were Germans. They were a couple of deckhands who had run to sea to escape the conscription, and they were both very frightened men at the idea of being caught by their compatriots.

Lieutenant Plough examined them with a thoughtful eye. "There is not much to choose between you as regards physiogs. You both look German enough to play in a band. Now let's see how you can give a word of command. Suppose you're a full-fledged skipper. Say, 'Lower away those boats.' Say it in German, and say it as if you meant it. You, first."

The man let off a sudden bawl.

"Now you."

Number two man yapped the order in true officer's style.

"Yes, you're the better of the two. Now, which of you is about the build of your late skipper?"

The second man grinned, and believed he was.

"Right. Go you to the master's room and rootle out a full kit of uniform--coat and cap, and the more brass binding it has on it the better. Then come back to this bridge. I may want you to appear as captain here, and the more trigged out you are in uniform, the more you'll appeal to the German official mind. Mr. Mate?"

The mate waddled to the upper bridge.

"Well?"

"Say 'sir' when you speak to me. Got that?"

"Yes--sir."

"Good. Then I want two big heavy weights, up to a ton, or a ton and a half, on the foredeck there."

"There's a young locomotive boiler down under number two hatch on the top of the coals, if that will do--sir."

"Derrick carry it?"

"Not without preventer stays--sir."

"Then rig them, and get off your hatch, and heave it up on deck at once. What about number two weight?"

"I can't think of another--sir."

"I can. There's that forrard winch. Unbolt it from the deck, cast off the steam pipes, and tell me when you have it adrift. And, just one other thing. Work silently. There's a fog coming on, and it will carry sounds like a telephone. Hullo, there's madam." He jumped down the upper bridge ladder, and stood before her. "Now I thought I'd got you comfortably stowed away in a clean, warm room, out of harm's way. You really mustn't come out on deck here."

"I don't want to be a burden to you. The room was clean, certainly. But warm! It was like a greenhouse. And the smell of oil! Perhaps you didn't know, but the cabin I was given opened right on to the engine-room. I should have been sick if I'd stayed there another minute."

"My good woman, if necessary, be sick. Other people have tried it and survived. If you're spotted out on deck here by the chap I'm expecting, it's all up with us--and, by gad! there he is, away on the port bow. Here, this is the skipper's drawing-room. In you go."

He bustled her into the chart-house, slammed the door behind her, and ran up to the bridge. "Quartermaster, see that cruiser broad on the port bow?"

"Yessir."

"Bear down to her, and if she moves, follow her."

"Yessir. Beg pardon, sir, but she's a Dutchman. We passed her coming in this morning. She's their _Hula_."

"Quite right," said Plough dryly. "I happened to be having a drink in her wardroom myself at Kiel not two months since. Now, you there, in the skipper's togs and the German tongue, come up on topside here, and listen. I'm heading for that German cruiser over yonder, because if I didn't she'd head for me, and overhaul me in about ten minutes. (Confound her beastly searchlight.) You're to pose as skipper here, and pretend this old tub's under a German charter. Stop your engines when you come within hailing distance, and sing out and ask her if she is the ship you were sent to bunker. She'll say (or I hope she will) that she isn't. Then waggle your hands, and ask them if they can tell you where the henkers the boat you are after, is to be found. Say you got your instructions by telephone, and the line was bad. Say you thought the name of the ship that wanted coaling was the Lieben--there's about a five to one chance she may be here--and you were to stand on and off across the harbour mouth here till you found her. You must use your wits, my lad, because, I take it, you'll be hanged if you're caught, and, anyway, I shall be squatted down under the lee of the weather-cloth here to attend to you if you make a hash of it. Grasp all that?"

"Yes, saire."

"Then carry on."

The ruse, to John B. Plough's glee, succeeded faultlessly. No; the cruiser was fully bunkered. Yes, the Lieben was cruising in company with her, and was stationed to s'uthward, and was very likely expecting a collier. Sorry for troubling? Not at all. These mistakes will happen, and shore telephones are the devil, anyway.

"In German, now," Lieutenant Plough hissed from under cover of the weather cloth, "tell your quartermaster to starboard his helm, you owl, and telegraph the engine-room for full speed ahead."

The man did this with full Teutonic formalities, and the war steamer and the collier parted with speed. Once more J.B. Plough turned to face his lady passenger.

"Yes," he said testily; "what is it now?"

"That room you put me in is disgraceful. I lit a match and saw the photographs on the walls. I never felt so insulted in my life."

"Well, you're ahead of me, my good woman. I haven't been into the room, and I haven't seen any photographs; and, if you'll take the tip from me, you'll go back and not light any more matches, and then you won't see them either. You can't stay out here on deck, anyway."

"I won't go back--that's flat. There's another kind of smell in there--of clothes, and people, and herrings--and it makes me feel deathly sick. Couldn't I come out if I put on that long oilskin coat that's hanging in the corner, and the sou'wester? I should look like a man then."

"If you tuck up your petticoats as well, and put on a pair of sea-boots. Madam, this isn't a comic opera. It's war. And colliers don't bring their women to sea. A hair out of place may easily mean death for the whole crowd of us. So, if you still insist on butting in to where you aren't wanted, you know how to dress the part. But I wish to heaven you'd keep under cover and be sick in private."

Plough ran the collier on the southerly course in search of _Lieben_ (which he especially did not wish to find) till he was sure _Hula_ was not following him, and then turned back on his course for home. "And that," said he, "puts us through their light cruiser screen. Another four miles, and we ought to get to where their destroyers are strung out in front. If only this infernal fog would come down good and thick in regular North Sea fashion, instead of letting itself get thin in patches, it's ten to one we'd slip through without being sighted."

The chief engineer came to the upper bridge, and saluted Navy fashion. "Beg pardon, sir, but any time you're going to slow down and want fog, if you can only give me sixty seconds' warning on ahead through the voice-tube, I can arrange it."

"How's that?"

"We've as cargo good, hard steam coal. For our own bunkers we have some of the dirtiest sludge ever shot out of a Tyneside coal-drop. If the firemen are artists, they can make steam with it--if they've me to look after them. But if it's fired into the furnaces in the ordinary way, it simply blows straight out of the stack. I can always have it shovelled in that way if you want a smoke, sir."

"Good!" said John B. Plough. "That may just save our bacon. Just you hop below one-time and stand by to do it if I call down a warning. We may want that smoke inside ten minutes from now."

They did. The fog on which Plough had been relying, instead of becoming more solid, grew whispy and thin. Clean alleys of pure air cut through it here and there, and the coal-boat dodged in and out of the solid masses of vapour.

"If only the moon would pop out now," said Lieutenant Plough, "we'd be lit up like a theatre. According to their own textbooks, they ought to have six destroyers--or, at any rate, big torpedo-boats--strung out across here, and, as they're so brand-new to war, they're hardly likely to make an exception of to-night. Confound them! I wish they'd let me get home peaceably. I feel uncommonly out of it as admiral of a collier."

"_Wir-r-r-umph!_" said a shell hurrying past the coal-boat's bows.

"Cheer-o!" said Plough. "There she spouts!" and rang off his engines, "Below there! That the chief? Good! Let's have your worst class of smoke in the smallest possible time. There's a Dutchman somewhere slap on top of us, and I want to try a game on him."

The smoke lingered--hours it seemed to Lieutenant Plough, though in point of fact it was only fifteen seconds--and the enemy switched on a searchlight and made the fog opalescent. He could hear the destroyer nosing this way and that through the thickness, going at a big pace ahead, then at the full of her speed astern, and on every slant edging nearer.

Then, providentially, the fog thickened, and evil-smelling smoke also began to billow forth from the stack, thick, and glutinous, and black. "Fore-deck there--Mr. Mate!" Plough hissed out.

"Aye-aye--sir."

"Heave up that loco boiler chock-a-block, to your starboard derrick, sway outboard, and make fast with a hemp stopping on the wire as I told you. When you hear me whistle, cut."

A winch clacked and grunted, and a sheave screamed. Plough swore at the noise, and pulled the string of his syren to drown it. The fog might clear, or the smoke thin--it was now or never. The destroyer raced briskly up to where the great steam whistle boomed.

It was not the smallest use trying the German skipper dodge here. Destroyers in the outside line do not coal at sea. Lieutenant Plough sung out to have a Jacob's ladder put over the rail abreast of the foremast, and waited, leaden whistle in mouth.

The German destroyer swung up through the murk in a bustle of hurry and importance. She sheered round with one reversed propeller when she caught the collier's loom, and ran smartly up alongside. Her men stood on her deck, armed like pirates, and all ready to board. "Surrender, you beastly Britisher!" sung out a bearded officer on her bridge, as the sides of the two ships rasped together.

Plough blew his whistle; knives cut the stopping of the winch wire, and the huge steel boiler, weighted to the brim with water, dropped like a stone on to the flimsy decking of the vessel alongside. It hit her between her two foremost funnels, and shore through thin steel plate and angle iron as though they had been so much pie-crust.

One of her own boilers shot up with a whisk of steam and white-hot coal. Another boiler followed. Then a magazine created a volcano of its own, and then the war heads of the deck torpedoes added their quota to the inferno.

On the moment of impact Plough had rung for "Full speed" from his own engines, but the series of explosions had begun and ended before the ex-naval artificer below had got speed on her. The collier winced and reeled to the shocks, but the damage she received was practically nil. All her plates, all her frames were backed with buttresses of coal. She was packed with coal from floors to deckbeams, and was about as impervious to shock as a granite pier-head. The exploding destroyer spurned her away, but did not damage her.

"If I could own up to sinking that joker," said John B. Plough when at last the collier drew clear, and was plunging away at her normal nine knots through the friendly darkness, "the Admiralty would give me a tin medal. As it is, I guess my pigeon is to sing low. I'm an awful duffer at writing reports and giving explanations of anything outside routine----"

An oilskinned figure tapped him sharply on the arm. "Do you call that fair?" asked his passenger.

"I call it jolly smart, if you ask me. There are no Queensberry rules in this game. It's war--plain, naked war--and war's hell. If I didn't sink, burn, and destroy an enemy's ship when I got the chance, the taxpayer who stumps up my wages would grumble. And you wouldn't like him to do that, would you, madam?"

The lady shivered. "If it wasn't that I'm absolutely bound to get home, I wish I'd never come. You must have killed twenty of them."

"Sixty, I hope," said Plough.

* * * * *

They ran into Harwich without further interference, and Lieutenant John B. Plough went ashore in the boat he had stolen from a stranger in a German port, without saying good-bye, or asking anybody's leave. He judged quite rightly that the fat mate would acquire merit for bringing a valuable steamboat and cargo home out of the jaws of Total Loss, and did not concern himself about that officer's feelings any further.

He was apologetic only to his lady passenger as he handed her out on to a beach and kicked adrift the rowing-boat that had carried them.

"Sorry I've had to 'come the quarter-deck' over you once or twice, madam, but we've been in some tightish places, and they didn't bear monkeying with." He grinned at her affably all over his red, clean-shaven face. Women always said he had a most ingratiating smile. "Come, now, we'll go up to the Railway Hotel and have a good dinner and a bottle of pop, and I bet we part good friends after all."

"I am obliged to you," said the lady stiffly, "but I do not dine alone with young men in the Navy. I have my reputation to think about just as much as other people. I thank you most heartily for bringing me home, and you must excuse my getting familiar and offering you advice when you killed all those poor fellows on that destroyer. I was rather upset at the time. I wonder if I might ask one more favour?"

"Certainly, my----certainly, madam. Ten, if you like."

She opened her hand-bag, and from it gave him a small pack of cards. They read:

┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ MADAME ARTHUR. │
│ MODES ET ROBES. │
│ │
│ Manningham, Millinery │
│ Bradford. a Specialité. │
│ │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘

"If you would distribute those amongst your lady friends, it would be a great help to me. You may assure anyone you introduce that prices will be made most reasonable to her throughout the War, if she says she comes from you."