voice; men of very few words, which at least were never bare of meaning.
Honest, strong, steady men, sobered by domestic ties, one and all, as far
as I can remember.

That is what years ago the North Sea I could hear growling in the dark
all round the ship had been for me. And I fancied that I must have been
carrying its voice in my ear ever since, for nothing could be more
familiar than those short, angry sounds I was listening to with a smile
of affectionate recognition.

I could not guess that before many days my old schoolroom would be
desecrated by violence, littered with wrecks, with death walking its
waves, hiding under its waters. Perhaps while I am writing these words
the children, or maybe the grandchildren, of my pacific teachers are out
in trawlers, under the Naval flag, dredging for German submarine mines.


III.


I have said that the North Sea was my finishing school of seamanship
before I launched myself on the wider oceans. Confined as it is in
comparison with the vast stage of this water-girt globe, I did not know
it in all its parts. My class-room was the region of the English East
Coast which, in the year of Peace with Honour, had long forgotten the war
episodes belonging to its maritime history. It was a peaceful coast,
agricultural, industrial, the home of fishermen. At night the lights of
its many towns played on the clouds, or in clear weather lay still, here
and there, in brilliant pools above the ink-black outline of the land. On
many a night I have hauled at the braces under the shadow of that coast,