Hodgson and Bath bombed one submarine and sighted another on May 10th. Ramsden and myself bombed another, and Hallinan and Magor met three enemy seaplanes, on the 19th. And next day Morish and Boswell did in a submarine from a height of 200 feet, but, arriving back in harbour after dark, crashed their boat. Gordon and Hodgson bombed a submarine on the 22nd, and next day Newton and Webster had a brush with three enemy seaplanes, shots being exchanged but no damage done.
A boat working up the Dutch coast had one engine fail at the Maas light-ship, and flew homeward for an hour and a half on one engine, finally having to land at sea twenty miles north-west of the North Hinder. It was found and towed in by a destroyer. The Navy people, meeting the boats at all hours off the Dutch coast, and realising that we were doing a job of work outside, were now almost affable.
School work was also in full swing, for a boat had been turned over to the War Flight for this purpose, and the first pilots in their spare time crashed around instructing the second pilots in the gentle art of taking off and landing a big boat—an exercise which proved equally hard on the nerves of the instructors and on the bottom of the machine, as there was only a single control-wheel fitted and the first pilot had to give up all control to the pupil.
During this intensive work it was quickly found that the majority of the pilots could only stand an average of one long patrol in three days as a steady routine, and that if they went out oftener their work suffered. It was also found essential that they should be given regular leave at short intervals.
I was beginning to feel the strain a bit myself. At this time I was my own intelligence, engineer, carpenter, and slipway officer, looking after all overhauls and repairs, deciding the suitability of the weather, as we had no meteorological hut, and putting into the water and taking out again all machines, excepting when I was myself going out on patrol. I determined the force and direction of the wind by the look of the waves in the harbour, the actions of a flag, or the way the smoke blew off a chimney. There was no telephone in No. 2 shed, and I had already worn out a pair of thick-soled boots galloping to and fro between the slipway and the ship's office.
May was brought to a close by a gallant rescue at sea, which is well worth telling in detail.
III.
Hissed on by the ruthless wind, sea waves possess a malevolent cunning whereby they search out any weak spot in a structure made by man, and so finger, suck, hammer, and tear at the members which are flawed in design, material, or workmanship, that eventually the whole fabric is shattered.
The innocent wavelets dancing in the sun, pretty and sparkling, and the huge black rollers, whose crests under the weight of a gale, before they can curl over and break, explode into spindrift, are propagated by the wind blowing obliquely on the surface of the water.