The exhausted bluejackets were ordered to jump on board, and one by one they obeyed. It was a perilous business, for the waves were running twenty to thirty feet high, and at one moment both craft were lifted high in the air, while the next they were deep down in a hollow, with an awful, roaring breaker threatening to overwhelm them. It took half-an-hour before the whole seventy of them reached their haven of refuge; but the work was accomplished without the loss of a single soul; while the senior officer present, the torpedo gunner, true to the traditions of the service, was the last man to leave. Then the launch was cast adrift. She had served her purpose, and was never seen again.

The rescued men, many of them in the last stages of exhaustion and numbness after their frightful ordeal, were accommodated wherever room could be found for them. What food and tobacco the smack carried were shared out equally, and hot coffee was served out all round.

The Providence then shaped her course for home, and, after being taken in tow by another vessel when close to her destination, eventually berthed alongside the quay at Brixham at eight o'clock in the evening. And so, from the very jaws of death, Pincher Martin stepped ashore.

CHAPTER XII.
H.M.S. 'MARINER.'

I.

Your modern destroyer differs from her prototype of twenty years ago in much the same way as the present-day Rolls-Royce differs from the early motor-car of 1895. She is just about four times as large, is infinitely more seaworthy, is much faster, and better armed. She is an ocean-going craft which, with judicious handling, can keep the sea in practically any weather, whereas her more elderly sister usually had to run for shelter in a really bad gale of wind, and was unfit for constant work in the North Sea except in summer.

Pincher had seen destroyers at work, and had heard a great deal about them in one way and another; and when, in the first week of February, he found himself detailed as one of the crew of a new craft of this type on the verge of completion in a northern port, he was happy. True, he knew he 'wouldn't be 'arf seasick,' as he put it, and did not at all relish the idea, though the extra sixpence a day 'hard-lying money' was always something to be grateful for. He was aware, moreover, that life in a destroyer in war-time was considered rather a hard and risky existence; but he would probably be in the thick of anything which took place in the North Sea, and he owed 'them 'Uns' something for sinking his first ship and drowning many of his shipmates.

He wondered why he had been sent to a destroyer at all, however, for he knew that as a rule ordinary seamen were not eligible. As a matter of fact, it was Peter Wooten, the late senior watch-keeper of the Belligerent, who had worked the oracle. Wooten was the sort of person whom nothing could kill. I don't know how many times he had been wrecked, or how often his life had been in danger; but after the battleship sank he had been in the water for half-an-hour in nothing but a singlet and a pair of socks, in one of which was stuffed his last five-pound note. He had been picked up by a boat from one of the cruisers at the last moment, and purely by a lucky accident; but even then he had been rather annoyed with his rescuers because they laughed at his scanty and unofficer-like attire. He also had a grievance because he had lost his best uniform cap, a brand-new article which, he informed any one who cared to listen, had cost him the sum of twenty-two shillings and sixpence, and had last been on his head when he jumped overboard. Incidentally he had saved the lives of two men by helping them to reach pieces of wreckage; but, being as hard as nails himself, he was not one whit the worse for his aquatic adventures.

He eventually got ashore in a borrowed overcoat, proceeded on a fortnight's leave, and then, as the result of a visit to a friend at the Admiralty, found himself appointed to the Mariner, a new destroyer. Naturally he was delighted, and at once set about collecting a good ship's company for his new ship. He far preferred having men he knew to strangers who had never served with him before; and, by dint of a little judicious conversation with the officer in charge of the drafting-office at the barracks, Petty Officer Casey, Billings, M'Sweeny, and Pincher were officially detailed for his ship. It was Casey himself who had suggested Martin's inclusion, though that youth was unaware who had caused a point to be stretched in his favour.