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Supposing now I say supposing we celebrated our return to harbour, and the fact that we haven't bumped a mine-field, by asking our chummy-ship to dinner to-night, and giving them a bit of a chuck-up! Which is our chummy-ship, by the way? Where's the What Ho! lying?" He walked to the scuttle and stuck his head out. "Blessed if I can tell t'other from which now we're all so beautifully disguised."
This seemed to enrage the British skipper, who threw over his wheel and ran directly across our bows, very much as one polo player tries to ride off another. "You fool!" he bellowed, fairly dancing about his quarter-deck with rage. "Why in hell don't you stop when I tell you to? Don't you know that you're running straight into a mine-field?
It was then seen that the gunboat anchored at the south end of the mine-field was signalling to them to stop; but still they went slowly on, feeling their way by the lead, while those aboard the gunboat began to fire rockets with exciting rapidity. Regardless of the warning, the two steamers kept on their way until they got to the anchorage, when the warship was hidden from view.
I quite agreed to your proposals as to my anonymity at the time when I was up in Scotland, but the thing's a secret no longer with the people who count. Every one in Germany knows that I'm a mine-field specialist, so I don't see why the dickens I should pose any longer as a sort of half-baked idiot." Rayton's eyes twinkled.
The attention of the lookouts having thus been attracted to our cruisers in the offing, we in the destroyers were able to slip into the roadstead undetected. Arrived there, we lost no time in sowing our mine-field right athwart the harbour's mouth, and, had we been so minded, could have finished our work and retired before daylight.
They have worked side by side with the dripping Submarine; they have sheltered through storms in the lee of anchored Battleships; they have piloted proud Cruisers through the newly-swept channels of a mine-field, and brought a Battle-cruiser Squadron its Christmas mail in the teeth of a Northern blizzard.
On the following day we learned by wireless, from one of our cruiser scouts, that the Russian fleet was being cautiously taken out to sea through our mine-field off the harbour's mouth, the innocuous character of which they had already ascertained, as intended by our Admiral, and, later on, the further information reached us that the fleet was at sea and carrying out evolutions while cautiously working its way southward.
At the base of the great mine-field which lies across the mouth of the Straits we were hailed by a British patrol boat, whose choleric commander bellowed instructions at us, interlarded with much profanity, through a megaphone.
As was the same type, but it achieved lasting fame in that it passed under the mine-field, through the Narrows, across the Sea of Marmora, and into the port of Constantinople. Right between the teeth of the Turkish forts and fleet it sank seven Turkish troop-ships and returned safely.
For many years after the World War blind economic selfishness in most countries, including our own, resulted in a destructive mine-field of trade restrictions which blocked the channels of commerce among nations. Indeed, this policy was one of the contributing causes of existing wars.
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