We were dodging various craft down the harbour when a squadron of
trawlers came out on our beam, at that extravagant rate of speed which
unlimited Government coal always leads to. They were led by an ugly,
upstanding, black-sided buccaneer with twelve-pounders.

"Ah! That's the King of the Trawlers. Isn't he carrying dog, too!
Give him room!" one said.

We were all in the narrowed harbour mouth together.

"'There's my youngest daughter. Take a look at her!'" some one hummed
as a punctilious navy cap slid by on a very near bridge.

"We'll fall in behind him. They're going over to the neutral. Then
they'll sweep. By the bye, did you hear about one of the passengers in
the neutral yesterday? He was taken off, of course, by a destroyer,
and the only thing he said was: 'Twenty-five time I 'ave insured, but
not _this_ time.... 'Ang it!'"

The trawlers lunged ahead toward the forlorn neutral. Our destroyer
nipped past us with that high-shouldered, terrier-like pouncing action
of the newer boats, and went ahead. A tramp in ballast, her propeller
half out of water, threshed along through the sallow haze.

"Lord! What a shot!" somebody said enviously. The men on the little
deck looked across at the slow-moving silhouette. One of them, a
cigarette behind his ear, smiled at a companion.

Then we went down--not as they go when they are pressed (the record, I
believe, is 50 feet in 50 seconds from top to bottom), but genteelly,