Throughout the winter and the following spring Kenneth Meredith still carried on at Scapa. Wakefield, too, was temporarily retained, but otherwise the band of R.N.V.R. officers and men of the M.L. patrol was steadily and rapidly diminishing.
Almost brand-new boats would steam out for the last time, bound south to lie, neglected and forlorn, in a Hampshire river, where a tier, four-deep and lengthening daily, was one of the many signs that the Great War was practically over, even if Peace were not yet signed.
Jock McIntosh was one of the first to be "demobbed." He went smilingly, confident of the future, yet something about him seemed to strike Meredith that his bright, almost jocular demeanour was a little simulated.
There were reductions amongst the Air Force people, too. Blenkinson and Jefferson went almost at the same time, reluctantly, into an unaccustomed world to start life afresh, as it were—Blenkinson into an office, setting aside the "joy-stick" to take up the pen; Jefferson into slightly more congenial surroundings—to wit, a large motor business.
Some months later Pyecroft went, via a demobilisation centre in the south of England, to take up the almost forgotten threads of study at an Engineering College.
Of all the R.A.F. fellows who, by chance, had been Meredith's comrades on board Q 171, only Cumberleigh remained, "carrying on" until the order came for the Air Station to "pack up."
During those months following the Armistice, Kenneth and Wakefield saw a good deal of Cumberleigh. Although there was much work to be done with the remaining M.L.'s, there was plenty of opportunity for leisure, and it was not to be wondered at that after months of strenuous and perilous occupation there was a decided tendency to "slack." Joy-riding, both afloat and in the air, was freely indulged in. For one thing, it "kept one's hand in," and it was better to make use of both boat and machine than to allow them to rust and deteriorate for want of use.
Several times Meredith accompanied Cumberleigh on a flight in a blimp over the interned German fleet. It was a novel sensation, driving along at fifty miles an hour in a motor-propelled gas-bag above the now impotent Hun navy and observing battleship, battle-cruiser, cruiser and destroyer rusting at their respective moorings.
"I can't imagine why we don't shunt those Huns," remarked Cumberleigh, during one flight. The ignition of both motors had been switched off and the blimp was floating almost motionless in the still air. "They're supposed to be 'care and maintenance parties,' but I'm hanged if I've ever seen them at work. The ships ought to have been surrendered and prize crews put on board."
"Wakefield and I were talking to a pukka commander on the very subject," said Meredith. "He quite agreed that Fritz ought to be shunted, but it appears that the Allied Council insists upon the German ships being kept in a state of internment."