on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman—vague references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message; which was to the effect that one of the barrage buoys appeared to have dragged a little, and the net looked as if it was worth examining.
{67}
The drifters spread out along the line of buoys and commenced their daily task of overhauling the steel jackstays, testing the circuits of the mines, repairing damage caused by the ebb and flow of the tide and winter gales.
Half an hour later the destroyers en{68}countered their reliefs, transferred the mantle of responsibility for the left flank with a flutter of bunting and a pair of hand-flags, and returned to their anchorage, where they were greeted by a peremptory order from the signal station to complete with oil fuel and report when ready for sea again. A coastal airship had reported an enemy submarine in the closely guarded waters of the Channel, and along sixty miles of watchful coast the hunt was up.
{68}
“My brother Alf,” said the sight-setter disgustedly, as he kicked off his seaboots and prepared for an hour’s sleep, “’e may be famil’r wif tools wot I don’t know nothin’ about. But there’s one thing about ’em—when ’e lays ’em down, ’e bloody-well lays ’em down.”
’
IV. The Hunt
The Hunt
The Blimp rose from her moorings, soaring seaward, and straightway the roar of her propeller cut off each of the occupants of the car into a separate world of his own silence. The aerodrome with its orderly row of hangars dropped away from under them with incredible swiftness. Fields became patchwork, buildings fell into squares and lozenges without identity. Figures which a minute{69} or two before had been noisy, muscular, perspiring fellow-men working on the ropes, were dots without motion or meaning, and faded to nothingness.
{69}
A flock of seagulls rose from the face of the cliff, whirled beneath them like autumn leaves, and dropped astern. The parallel lines of white that were breakers chasing each other to ruin on a rock-bound coast merged into the level floor of the Atlantic, and presently there was nothing but sea and blue sky
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