anxious moment of the voyage had come. We waited for the shot that
would show them to be German.

"They're all right. They're the escort!" came a voice on the winds
that swept over the bridge.

They grew rapidly large, lashed the sea white as they tore along
one on each side of us, diving through the waves when they could
not ride them. When abreast of us they seemed almost to stop in
their own length, wheel and disappear in the distance. Somehow the
way they wheeled reminded me of the way the Cossacks used to pull
their horses sharply at right angles when I saw them covering the
rearguard in the retreat through the Bukovina.

The rough soldier at my side looked after them, with a mist in his
eyes that did not come from the sea. "I'll be able to see my wife
again," he said, more to the waves than to me. "I didn't write,
because I didn't want to raise any false hopes. But this settles
it, we're certain to get home safe now. I suppose I'll walk in and
find her packing my food parcel for Germany--the parcel that kept
me alive, while some of them poor Russian chaps with nobody to send
them parcels are going under every day."

We ran close to two masts sticking up out of the water near the
mouth of the Humber, the mast of our sister ship, which had gone
down with all on board when she struck a mine.

That is the sort of sight which makes some critics say, "What is
the matter with the British Navy?" Those critics forget to praise
the mine-sweepers that we saw all about, whose bravery, endurance