A torpedo-boat destroyer hove within signalling distance. The commander was handed a message by a sailor. The alert skipper read it, and said:—
"Tell 'em 'yes.'... Just want to know if we had swept around there."
Still the smoke-coloured little vessels kept up the job of plying back and forth in the waters. Men were busy at the stern of the ships watching the wooden kites that are made so as to catch the mines by the hawser that is slung between the two steamers. The slightest sign of a ball-like piece of steel in the sea and the dullness of sweeping is relieved, for then the skipper knows that he has unhooked one of the mines. Along came a submarine, flying the white ensign of the Royal Navy. The mine-sweepers realise that these men have no arm-chair job, and admire the commander and crew of the under-water boats accordingly. A sailor semaphored with his arms, and the commander of the mine-sweeper sent a message back, and the submarine passed slowly on her way.
"If some of those people at home and abroad at their firesides realised what the men at sea have to suffer to keep this coast free they might have a different way of talking," declared the commander, now taking to his much-burned old pipe. "Those chaps that have just come in have had a week without any sleep—or next to none—and their food has all been canned stuff. There are many persons who think the North Sea's a pond—same as they do over in America."
On we steamed in our section of the waters with never a sign of a German mine. Finally, the day came to a close, and the captain ordered the hawser to be slipped and the kite hoisted in the stern crane of his vessel, the like being done by the other sweeper.
As if glad that the day's work was over, the small craft pressed forward to the harbour, and were disappointed to find that a big tramp was taking up the room of their berths. They anchored outside, waiting for the big steamer to get away.
"Do they tell you when you can come alongside the dock?" I asked.
"No need to," said the captain with a smile. "You'll see."
We had been in the open harbour for about twenty minutes when the bows of the ugly vessel came slowly on. An instant later all the small craft were ready to speed to their respective berths in their turns, and it was not so very long before the mine-sweeper was tied to her part of the dock. The commander of the sister vessel to the one I had been aboard came over to us.
"Good ship that of yours?" I said.