a big plump lass." He is an oyster-dredger in civil life and is
eagerly looking forward to experiencing once more the delicate thrills
and excitement of this hazardous sport. Jones, our Signaller, who
recently wrote a poem which opened with the lines,

"I for one will be surprised
When we are demobilised,"

was struggling painfully to insert a pair of boots into a recalcitrant
kit-bag, and exhibited an expression of dogged determination rather
than the astonishment he had predicted. The Trimmer was heard
complaining mournfully that when he left the Patrol Office for the
last time they never said good-bye. He seemed to feel this keenly.

All of us were more or less excited, all as it were on tip-toe with
expectancy, like school-boys on breaking-up morning. All, did I say?
No, there was one member of the crew who sat supremely indifferent to
the prevailing atmosphere of emotion, gazing calmly before him with
his solitary lacklustre eye. The Silent Menace, the ship's dog,
betrayed none of our childlike sentiment. Demobilisation was nothing
to him--he was too old a campaigner to let a little matter like that
agitate his habitual reserve. To us the recent period of hostilities
had been "The War," the only war in which we had ever been privileged
to fight; but to him it was just one of the numberless affrays of an
adventurous life, and, judging by the worn condition of his ears and
the veteran scars that tattooed his tail, some of the previous ones
had had their share of frightfulness. And to-morrow, no doubt, he will
try the game again.

It was the Third Hand who suddenly propounded the unsolvable question: