They carried out several more trials, and eventually, in the third week of February, the ship commissioned. Her officers and men shifted themselves and their belongings on board from their respective hotels and lodgings. Pompey, Jane, the two cats, and a newly acquired fox-terrier puppy rejoicing in the name of Tirpitz were dragged ruthlessly on board, and the destroyer hoisted her pendant and ensign. She was a man-of-war at last.
Two days later she sailed to the southward. The good wishes of her builders went with her; for, if anything serious went wrong with her interior economy within the next few months, they, by their contract, were due to pay the piper.
And so the Mariner put out to sea.
III.
All things are said to have their uses; but I have never yet been able to discover any utilitarian purpose attached to a fog. I believe that the men serving in lighthouses and lightships benefit by them to the extent that they receive extra pay in return for their want of sleep while their hooters and sirens are working; but I am more than certain that this small addition to their salaries would be more than made up by annual subscriptions from cheerful captains, masters, and officers of His Majesty's Royal Navy and the Mercantile Marine were fogs to be abolished altogether.
There are fogs and fogs. A fog ashore is a nuisance which may cause one to arrive as much as an hour late at the office, may make one miss an appointment with one's dentist, or, worse still, an appointment to lunch or dinner with some opulent acquaintance. I have even heard of a London fog which was so thick that the conductor of a motor-omnibus, who had left his vehicle to discover his whereabouts, was unable to find it again. I feel sorry for that man, for a fog ashore is always an inconvenience and a nuisance, sometimes even a positive danger. But a real fog at sea is ever a ghastly nightmare; while thick weather in war-time, when one has to pursue a zigzag and serpentine track along a coast to dodge well-sown minefields laid for one's especial discomfiture and disintegration by an obliging and thoughtful cousin from the other side of the North Sea—well, the less said about it the better. Moreover, when the restricted navigable channels are crowded with merchant ships which the presence of mines and enemy submarines does not seem to deter, and when most of the buoys and navigational safeguards have been removed for the annoyance of the afore-mentioned Hun submarine, the difficulties are increased. Piloting a vessel in such circumstances might perhaps appeal to some jaded individual in search of new thrills; but to the ordinary simple sailor, who gets his thrills as regularly as clockwork free, gratis, and for nothing, an off-shore fog is an invention of the Evil One.
So when, during the Mariner's first passage, Wooten noticed the horizon to seaward was gradually becoming obliterated in a luminous haze, and the outline of the land was rapidly becoming less and less distinct in white, cotton-wool-like puffs of vapour, he cursed gently and felt anxious.
'Yes,' he growled disgustedly to the first lieutenant, whose watch it was, 'we're in for a regular thick un. D'you see this little lot?' He placed a finger on a large red oblong outlined on the chart.
MacDonald nodded.
'That's their latest minefield,' the skipper continued. 'According to all accounts it's a pretty good un, as four steamers have been blown up there within the last two days. We shall be up to this corner of it in about a quarter of an hour, and we've got to snuggle in between it and the shore somehow. I don't much fancy running along within a mile of the coast if we can't see a yard in front of our faces. However,' he added with a sigh, 'I suppose it's got to be done.'