longer distances, thus burning more coal than the company allowed for the run, and, worst of all, differed from those se long accepted as "The Route." One day as we wandered hawking over the now nearly empty seas, we met by a strange chance, within a few hours of each other, two Dutch ships. We proceeded to board them; and each in turn produced an interesting comment on the effects of the blockade at home.

The first steamer we encountered was lolling idly on the smooth warm sea, sending up into the calm air a straight column, many yards high, of smoke and waste steam. She was stopped, and apparently "broken down." We suspected a dodge of some sort, and approached very cautiously. There had already been so many "surprise paokets" that the greatest circumspection was necessary. However, it turned out that she was quite genuinely disabled, and was, indeed, engaged at the moment in plugging leaky condenser tubes with wood! The eaptain reported sadly that he had left the happy if neutral land of Holland ten days before, where they had had a "refit"; but that there was now no copper or brass to be had there with which to make even the smallest of the required repairs to their condenser. Not long after the return of our boarding party, the ailing Dutchman, plugged to last for a few miles more, pulled himself together, and slowly passed away over the horizon south

ward, en route to "the Plate." Her condensers must nearly have become "dummy" by the time she arrived there.

The other ship we met was the Ecuador, a brand-new vessel on nearly her maiden trip.

She was a nice little ship, and by her appearance seemed to have been built to carry passengers; so we were surprised on boarding her to find she was carrying cargo only. This fact was also due to the impossibility of obtaining either brass or copper in Holland. The frames for the glass in the orifices known to the travelling landsman as "port-holes" (but, properly speaking, "souttles"), are heavy castings of "metal"-i.e., brass. As none of this could be obtained, there was nothing for it but to secure a long sheet of steel over the row of holes in the ship's side, thus making it practically impossible carry passengers, who might legitimately object to cabins having neither light nor air.

to

Not long afterwards we had dim and secret rumours, for the "umteenth" time, of the arrival in our waters of a "German raider." So many similar Wolf eries had already come, and then, with their echoes, vanished into the thin air of lies whence they had originated, that we felt disinclined to believe in this one. None the less, it would be madness to take no special steps. "Something" had to be done, and it had to be done with dignity and caution, so as not to permit the Germans on shore to laugh, hap

But

Accordingly, our poor little squadron, from various causes attenuated at the moment to three ships, began zigzagging carefully over our patrol area in a pattern arranged so as to eover, economically, as much ground as possible in a given time, We knew that one of the chief reasons for the originating of these German romances was to make us burn as much coal, unnecessarily, as possible. It caused both trouble and expense, of course, to undertake these extra and extended patrollings; that was inevitable; but it gave us great satisfaction to counter the enemy object by reducing both worry and oost to the lowest possible figures.

However, on this particular occasion, as it turned out, the eries of Wolf were genuine (or, to be accurate, it was the Moewe, for the Wolf was the Atlantie raider of the following year). On a certain lovely Sunday morning, while still, on each new "leg" of our zigzags, our eyes were straining over ever-new horizons, the Ariadne and the Appam were cleverly eaptured by the Moewe, while the Clan Mactavish, after a most plucky and honourable fight, was sunk the same evening by the same assailant. Knowing the keen lookout we were keeping, it seemed to us, in the first smart of disappointment, to have been an

Nobody knows, or believes, how wide it is until they come out into it, to see for themselves; and, apart from this proof by personal observation, there is the precise and mathematical one. Let the patrol-area be plotted on paper, on a large scale, in all its square thousands of sea miles; and then place anywhere on it the little sixpenny circle, representing the twelve-mile radius visible from a ship's look-out; and the reasons for missing the sighting of a ship (quite apart from any fortuitous cause, such as "night-time" "visibility") become absurdly apparent. As to the chances of the actual meeting of two ships, complicated as they are by questions of coal and speed, wind and weather, they approximate, as nearly as may be, to zero itself.

or

In spite of our elaborate zigzags, it was, in reality, absolutely normal that the Moewe escaped us; it would have been extraordinary luck, on the other hand, if we had sighted or (still more) met her. Where she certainly did have a "slice of luck," however, was with "wireless." Both the Appam and the Clan Mactavish reported, subsequently, that they had sent out distress signals; and though our

within easy range of hearing their calls for help (being within 150 miles distance on each occasion), none of their “S.O.S.” signals reached our listening instruments, owing to merely chance reasons, toe technical to describe.

The raider, accordingly, proceeded unmolested southward towards Brazil; and it was not until ten days after the Appam affair that we that we got definite news of the German's highly successful trip.

This news was shortly afterwards followed by its visible evidences, through the arrival at Santa Cruz of one of the Moewe's captures-the British steamer Westburn, filled with the crews, numbering 207 men, from the ships she had sunk. All these men were successfully landed, and handed ever to the consulates interested; and, whilst new and interesting questions (for jurists only) of international law, respecting the status of the "provisionally interned" ship, were sizzling to and fro over the cables, between Spain, England, and the Islands, the German crew of the Westburn calmly pulled out the plug and sunk the ship at her anchorage, thus disposing of the whole question. It was clever and amusing, and, altogether, good hunting."

There is no doubt that Graf von Doehne Sohlodien, the captain of the Moewe, deserved all his success. Fortune favours the bold; and, moreover, he left behind him no

marked his dashing raid from Germany. Single-handed, he put forth into an ocean full of smarting and watching enemies; up and down the trade routes he went, sinking, burning, and destroying, whilst saving all ships' crews; and the whole adventure, together with his successful flight back to Wilhelmshaven (where the Moewe arrived, untouched, on 4th March, after a two months' "flip"), constitutes a feat which we might feel proud to place to our own credit.

This exploit was almost immediately followed by the Declaration of War by Germany against Portugal.

The condition of " "neutrality" of Portugal had always been somewhat tenuous; and when, at last, all the German steamers sheltering at the various ports were seized by the Portuguese authorities (on the justifiable, if rather "thin," exeuse of saving them from sabotage by their own crews), the tenuity through.

During the act of taking over the steamers, and before war had actually been declared, the Germans gave the future belligerent a taste of their charming methods. An armed party of Portuguese soldiers was sent to take over charge of the steamship Schwartzburg, sheltering at Ponta Delgado, in the Azores. On leaving the ship, the German crew left behind them several bottles of beer, and a single bottle labelled "Rhum." The discipline of

as

their military successors, the Germans well knew it would be, was, to put it with moderation, inferior to their own; and the temptation was severe. The liquor was poisoned four of the men who drank of it died in agonies shortly after; two more lingered a few days, a seventh recovered. When this piece of news reached the people of Madeira, the war became became a very personal affair to each individual. The Germans in their midst were thankful for even the comparative security afforded by "internment."

The Declaration of War meant the coming of German submarines. There was no doubt about them this time; and our entirely defenceless "base," accordingly, had to be shifted to a harbour, which, while it would be much overstating matters to describe it as "safe," was certainly less dangerous than Madeira. This was St Vincent, in the Cape de Verde Islands, and here we arrived on 17th March 1916, and celebrated St Patrick's Day by ending it with our first night at anchor, after 171 consecutive ones at sea. When the flagship arrived, it was, indeed, for the Admiral and his staff their 385th successive night of the cradle of the deep! This was the beginning of the end of the Ninth Cruiser Squadron. We still patrolled the wide expanses of ocean

around us; we still guarded, through the remainder of 1916, the vast British interests, the valuable store of coal, and the greatest submarine cable station in the world, in that nearly desert island. The need for our existence was dying, however, all the time; and 1917 saw the return to England of the last of our cruisers, wonderfully maintained in a going condition through all those years of incessant seawork.

It was time. The early interests and novelties of patrol had disappeared; the submarine menace in our waters was now quite real, and could not adequately be guarded against (as witness the unembarrassed shelling of Funchal by one of them, late in 1916), and our usefulness had gone.

We left without a sigh of regret, except for the unfortunates of the cable station, still obliged to remain there in the burning sun, the howling, blustering, ceaseless N.E. trade wind of St Vincent, under its brazen sky, and enveloped in the brown cloud of perpetually flying sand, that are its unpleasant characteristics.

How soft and green was England-how happy-in spite of short rations, and of 8 "submarine zone" still dominating the depths of her “inviolable sea"!

LIFE at Hopeton very soon settled down into a kind of routine. I had my own way with Duncan, whose confidence I quickly won. By keeping him as much as possible away from his father, and arranging for him to have his meals with Mrs Cunningham, the old housekeeper, I got him into a more healthy state of mind, which soon reacted upon his body. The Laird never interfered. He left me an entirely free hand, and practically ignored the existence of the boy.

His own attention was taken up to a great extent with the study of chess. He would spend hours working out the variations of some fresh opening, which he would afterwards spring upon me at our game in the evening. I was always more than a match for him, and several unorthodox gambits that he attempted ended in rapid fiascos. The more often I beat him, however, the greater his respect for me seemed to grow, and the power I attained over him in this way gradually had its effect upon his behaviour to the rest of the household.

As time went on I found that I could often nip one of

his outbursts of anger in the bud by means of a few quiet words. He grew to be ashamed of losing his temper in my presence, and would often restrain himself until I had gone, but give the more violent vent to his rage in my absence.

Marigold was quick to note this change. She and I were seldom alone, though living under the same roof. Duncan was generally with me in the day, and chess took up most of my evenings. One morning, however, when I had kept the boy in bed with a cold, I met her picking flowers in the garden, and we had a chance of exchanging views.

"I sometimes wonder, Dr Seaton," she said, after we had talked for a few minutes on indifferent subjects,-"I sometimes wonder if you don't find our life here very monotonous."

"It is so new to me that, on the contrary, I find it very interesting," I answered.

"In any case, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing a great deal of good."

"How so?" I asked, for it had not struck me in this light. "Look how Duncan has im

VOL. CCVII.-NO. MCCLII.

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