i8 
Land & Water 
June 20, 1918 
is over at eighteen. They have different methods, but at 
heart they are the same pretty colour. One is clever, one 
feigns to be a know-nothing ; one has a dark and secret , 
blue eye, the other a light and limpid blue eve ; one is a 
sphinx, the other plays a gentle, feminine buffoonery. 
There, in the green raincoat, is the girl who backs up the 
mistresses, pours the chill milk of her human kindness upon 
honest gossip, defends the small too publicly for their comfort, 
draws lines in her notebook with a ruler. 
That thin girl with the big eyes is a hero worshipper. She 
■will carry with her bits of ribbon of the beloved, belts, old 
stockings, and stale chocolates. She is so ready to be martyred 
that she is martyred every time ; she eats little and grows thin, 
because she is always in love, and always under the necessity 
of proving it. 
But there are gajjs in the class. There are women 
whom I cannot fix. who carry in their eyes no past and no 
future, in whom the link witli their vouth is for ever broken. 
Life is the only school they can remember, and if that 
other school appears for a moment upon the plate of their 
memory, that active, orderly and simple life of wooden desks, 
green playing fields, and bells which ring off every hour, 
it is a memory of something mythically young, a kindergarten 
in infancy. 
Perhaps they are the married . women, unrecognisable . . . 
The lecturer's voice taps sharply on my ears, the hour has 
struck, the class breaks up and all the growij-up girls 
sigh as they gather their books together, "Isn't he 
wonderful ! Isn't he wasted here ! He ought to be 
running a Department. He ought to be Minister of 
Aeronautics !" 
For one of the vanities of women demands that she should 
shift everything from its place and call it creation, and, seeing 
a creature good at its work, she would like to put it at some 
other work and so gain glory from her passion for 
reconstruction. 
A Drop of Leaf: By Etienne 
A GLEAM of light flickered up momentarily to 
the east and caught the tired eyes of a young 
lieutenant on his fore-bridge of a lighf cruiser. 
He leant his back against the binnacle of the 
compass and rubbing the eyepieces of his binocu- 
lars to remove the dew, he focussed them on the horizon. 
He knew that somewhere on his beam lay a squadron and 
that at dawn a signal was expected from the flagship of that 
squadron. 
The hour was 3.40 a.m. and the day was at that stage 
of its career, which is sometimes called "the false dawn." 
The sea was perfectly calm, and of a leaden grey hue ; 
such of the sky as could be distinguished was grey, the 
ships were grey, and to the young lieutenant, who had 
been standing by the compass since midnight, life seemed 
grey. 
He was waiting for the signal, with an anxious intensity 
bom of nine months' arduous patrol and convoy work. 
As he stared through his glasses, a startling change took 
place in the eastern sky. At first a dull, red glow appeared. 
as from a big fire below the rim of the sea. 
From this centre of light, which grew more luminous 
every second, purple and gold fingers stretched themselves 
tentatively across the sky, reaching towards the zenith. 
It was the birth of dawn. The young lieutenant was not 
without a sense of the beautiful, but he had seen the 
inauguration of so many days in the North Sea that his 
attention was chiefly concentrated ilpon four dark silhouettes 
which appeared for the first time on the horizon. It was 
the other squadron, and the leading.ship was the flagship. 
* * * 
At the first sign of dawn, a signalman in the flagship had 
annouijced the fact to the Flag Lieutenant who was snatching 
an hour or two's sleep on the chart-house settee. Sitting 
up, he fumbled in his pocket for a signal written out the 
night before, and countersigned by the Admiral. 
"Take that to the Belfast, and report when through," 
he said, handing the crumpled paper to the waiting yeoman. 
A couple of minutes later he was asleep again, and had 
to be awakened a second time to receive the information 
that the Belfast had received and understood "your 1545". 
At 3.45 a.m. on the lower bridge of the Belfast, three 
signalmen had collided, due to their simultaneous attempts 
to reach the signalling shutter of a searchlight and reply 
to the calling-up signal of the flagship. 
The young lieutenant op the after-bridge was just able 
to shout "Flagship calling us" when the metallic rattle 
of the shutter and the hiss of the arc light below informed 
him that his information was entirely superfluous. 
In thirty seconds the signal had been received, in another 
ten the young heutenant was shouting down a pipe, "Captain, 
sir ! Captain, sir I Captain, sir ! " 
"Yes?" 
"Ofi&cer of the watch speaking, sir. From the Flag; 
'Proceed in execution of previous orders.'" 
"Ah — well, alter course ; have you got the new course ? " 
"Yes, sir, it'^ N.70° W. and the navigator is down for a 
call at 4 a.m." 
"Very good, what sort of a day is it ?" 
"Fine morning, sir. Extreme visibility, B.C. and the 
glass is steady." " . 
" Leaf " is Matelot's language for leave. 
"Very good. Call me again when we're steady on the 
new course." 
"Very good, sir," answered the young heutenant, and 
closing the mouth of the speaking tube, he took his stand 
at the compass. 
"Pretty" chatty, the owner is this morning, ain't 'e ?" 
remarked the helmsman to the petty officer quartermaster. 
Though they were on the lower bridge, the whole of the fore- 
going conversation had been audible to them, as a branch 
to the captain's fore-bridge voice-pipe led to the steering 
compass. 
"You watch the ship's 'ead, young feller!" replied the 
quartermaster, who objected on general principles to 
famiharity with young ordinary seamen. 
The helmsman accepted the rebuke and silently gazed 
into the magnifying prism on the compass bowl. This 
docility touched the heart of the quartermaster, he determined 
to unbend. 
"Wotcher going to do wiv yer drop of leaf, my son?" 
The helmsman was about to reply when a voice from above 
shouted: "Port 25 !" 
The young lieutenant was altering course and the Belfast 
was proceeding in execution of previous orders. 
As the helm went over, the bow slowly swung round with 
increasing speed, her long low stern appeared to side-slip in 
the water and as she "transferred" she left a sheet of glassy 
water on the inside of the turn. 
The edge of this sheet of water lapped and folded in 
towards her swinging quarter with a curious .sucking sound. 
As she was turning at speed, she heeled inwards two or three 
degrees, and this,, combined with the distinctive rattle of 
the steering engine, caused more than one of the occupants 
of cabin bunks, and serried rows of hammocks on the mess- 
decks, to wake and think for a moment as to the meaning of 
the turn. 
In a man-of-war at sea, most of her inhabitants sleep very 
lightly, and a swift turn, especially during the dayhght 
hours, makes every one pause for a moment and wait ex- 
pectantly for the bump or what a Hun ofl&cer of my acquain- 
tance once described as the "characteristic jar' of a torpedo 
on steel plating." 
At night a turn probably wakes up half the sliip's company. 
Things — unpleasant things — can happen so very quickly 
on a dark n ight when one's home is travelHng at 25 knots 
without ligb ts — it is always wise to be prepared. 
On the occasion I have in mind, those of the Belfast's 
compa^iy w'no were awakened by the turn, rolled over again 
with a happy smile on their lips." They knew what it meant. 
They knev ; that the rest of the squadron were steaming 
south and that they alone had turned to the westward for 
the purpo! ;e of making an East Coast port, wherein the ship 
would refit and from which they would proceed on leave. 
As the young lieutenant steadied the Belfast on her new 
course and reported to the Captain, eight bells struck; 
half a. dc zen hooded figures in lammv coats turned over to 
the r.iorning watch look-outs and tramped below, negotiating 
the iteep ladders to the upper deck with amazing swiftness 
in t fteir b eavy sea boots and masses of warm clothing. 
\ few minutes later the navigator came up and, as is the 
ha bit of iiavigators, fondled the compass and took a bearing 
of the sun . 
To a na vigator his standard compass is as a good wife, 
a pearl be^yond price, for on the accuracy of his compass 
