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IT was shortly before four in the morning that there came a thundering knock on the door of Toby Kerrell’s cabin, followed by the switching on of the light. Then the voice of the seaman doing duty as bridge messenger, a gigantic figure in thick duffle coat and muffled nearly to the eyes in a series of woollen comforters.

“First-lieutenant, sir? It’s close on ten minutes to four.”

Kerrell, who was lying fully dressed on his bunk, sat up and rubbed his eyes. There was a vile taste in his mouth, for the deadlights were screwed hard down over the scuttles, and the atmosphere below was stagnant and heavy with an indescribable odour of stuffiness.

“What’s the weather?” he asked, yawning.

“Clear, sir, and flat calm,” the seaman replied.

“Cold?” Toby queried, noticing the man’s swaddled appearance.

“Yes, sir. Perishin’ cold.”

“Very well. I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, putting his legs over the side of the bunk and sliding to the deck, where he stretched himself and yawned prodigiously.

Lord, how tired and sleepy he was! He had spent nearly four hours in his bunk, but had never really slept. Closing his eyes he had tried every artifice he could think of to induce slumber; but sleep had not come, merely an occasional fitful doze in which he remained conscious of all the racket and turmoil around him.

Life in a destroyer in wartime was not all jam, whatever people might think. With the Libyan steaming at twenty-five knots, quivering and trembling to the thrust of her turbines, resounding to the hollow drumming of her whirring propellers, a sound not unlike the roar of an express train tearing through an everlasting tunnel, it was sheer purgatory.

Each separate article of furniture, every fitting, played its own irritating little tune, an incessant jarring and creaking and jangling and chattering which spelt added unrestfulness to nerves already frayed by nearly five months of war.

Toby Kerrell, whose age was twenty-four, was blessed with vigorous health and good spirits. He was not ordinarily troubled with nerves. But there were times when he longed for a little peace and rest from this ceaseless activity.

Brushing his teeth and dressing himself in heavy leather sea-boots, ‘lammy-coat,’ with a thick muffler and a pair of glasses round his neck, four o’clock found him on the bridge. Hendry, the lieutenant-commander, was still up.

“Good morning, sir,” said Toby with what affability he could muster.

The commanding officer, never at his best in the early hours, grunted something unintelligible under his breath and walked over to starboard, where he rested his arms on the wire jackstay of the wing dodger and peered moodily out to the eastward. Toby, sensing trouble, proceeded to take over the watch from the sub-lieutenant.

The youth, for Pardoe was little more, told him the course and speed and formation of the flotilla, showed him the position on the chart by dead reckoning, and pointed out the dark shapes of the light-cruisers a few cables to port upon which the leading destroyer was keeping station. It was a calm, moonless night with hardly a ripple on the water. There was a visibility of two to three miles, weather which was unusually fortunate for the North Sea in the month of January.

For the first time for many months, and heaven knows how many days and nights the Libyan had spent at sea since the war had started, the little ship drove along with hardly a curtsy. Built for something approaching thirty knots, she was travelling now at a good twenty-five. The night was full of the swishing crash of parted waters, mingled with the deep, roaring note of the stokehold fans driven at high speed; the air redolent with the overpowering stench of oil-fuel.

Thank God, however, for oil-fuel! It made the task of re-fuelling so much easier than with coal, every ounce of which, in the older destroyers, had to be shovelled into bags by manual labour and hoisted on board before being tipped into the bunkers. With oil one simply took the ship alongside a tanker, connected up a pipe or two, and let the pumps do the rest.

“You’ll find that about ten revs over the twenty-five will keep her in station,” the sub explained to his relief, pointing to the dim black shape with blue shaded stern-light and whitened wash of the next ship ahead, less than a hundred yards over the bows. “She’s steering fairly easily.”

“Any signals?” Toby asked.

“The cruisers are easing to twenty and spreading to visibility distance at dawn, maintaining the present course,” said Pardoe. “We go to action stations at six o’clock.”

“What have we got manned now?”

“Forecastle gun fully manned, with the crews of the watch on deck at the others and the rest of the men sleeping handy. Ammunition-supply parties standing fast. Both pairs of tubes are trained outboard and ready. Torpedoes set for six feet, as usual.”

“I see,” said Kerrell, having discovered the torpedo-tubes ready on his way forward along the upper deck. “What about the challenge and reply?”

The sub-lieutenant handed him a slip of paper.

“Here,” he said. “The signalman’s got a copy, and I’ve warned him to turn it over to his relief. And that reminds me,” he added. “The leading telegraphist’s been reporting enemy wireless very faint, a hundred and fifty miles away at least, he guesses. That’s what brought the skipper up from the chart-house.”

“Right,” said Toby, unperturbed.

Intercepted German wireless was no new thing. They heard it almost at any time. It might, of course, mean that the enemy fleet was at sea. On the other hand, the chances were a hundred to a halfpenny it did not. The hostile outpost-boats, prowling Zeppelins, and homing submarines, seemed to chatter incessantly in that wet triangle which was the Heligoland Bight.

“Has he told you anything?” the first-lieutenant went on to ask.

“Not a word,” Pardoe replied. “He’s hardly opened his mouth except to curse me all ends up for being out of station, which I wasn’t. I may as well tell you, Number One,” he went on, speaking in a whisper with his voice full of suppressed anger. “I’m getting fed up with the way I’m treated! God knows I do my level best, but nothing I do pleases him. Never a day passes that I’m not called a B.F.! He hates the very sight of me! It’s unfair! I——”

“For God’s sake be quiet!” Kerrell hissed. “Lord, man, the bridge isn’t the place to discuss the skipper! And if you take my advice you won’t discuss him anywhere. That sort of game isn’t worth the candle. D’you want him to overhear what you’re saying and put you under arrest?”

“Of course not,” the boy answered.

“Then keep your mouth shut, you blazing young ass!—Right you are, sub!” he went on, altering his tone as he saw Hendry coming towards them. “You’d better go aft and get a couple of hours shut-eye before we go to action stations. Good night.”

The sub obeyed with alacrity.

Since the early afternoon of the previous day, when the Libyan had left Harwich in company with the other destroyers of her flotilla and a squadron of light-cruisers, they had been steaming at twenty-five knots on a northerly course towards the Dogger Bank. Something was in the wind. Why else should the Commodore have made the emergency signal to raise steam with all dispatch, which had been followed by that hurried exodus to sea? And why twenty-five knots, which, as a concentrated force, was practically their full speed? Twenty knots was the usual wartime cruising speed.

Were the German battle-cruisers out for another tip-and-run raid on the east coast, another Hartlepool or Whitby bombardment, perhaps? Or was the High Seas Fleet itself provocatively trailing its coat somewhere over the northern horizon?

Possibly, and more probably, it was another wild-goose chase, another of the many abortive expeditions they had made to sea since war had broken out more than five months before. It was rarely they had had a proper run for their money since that ding-dong fight off Heligoland in the previous August. Everyone had expected a fleet action within a few days of hostilities beginning, but, as usual, the prophets were hopelessly wrong. The enemy fleet, as a fleet, did not seem to have left its harbours. Ours had covered the North Sea from end to end, its cruisers and destroyers sweeping the waters almost up to the minefields round about Heligoland.

Kerrell was vaguely annoyed, however, at his absolute lack of definite knowledge as to what was expected to happen. What was in the confidential envelope which had come on board by motor-boat just before sailing, an envelope with the Commodore’s rubber stamp in the corner addressed personally to Hendry, as commanding officer, and for the receipt of which Kerrell had signed the letter-book?

Taking it below to the captain’s cabin, the lieutenant-commander had received it with a muttered “Thanks.” Kerrell had waited while he tore open the outer covering, to display another envelope within, sealed and marked “Secret.” Opening this, the captain had read its tantalizing contents, a single sheet of typed foolscap, and had then thrown it carelessly on his desk, picked up his pipe, and turned to see his subordinate still standing beside him.

Kerrell could have burst with annoyance and defeated curiosity when his captain, eyeing him without a smile, merely growled—“All right, first-lieutenant. You needn’t wait. You have your orders. Let me know five minutes before we’re ready to slip.”

Hendry always used the formal ‘First-Lieutenant’ instead of the more familiar ‘Number One.’ He was invariably aloof and secretive, facts which Kerrell resented. After all, he, Kerrell, was the man upon whom the command of the ship would devolve if anything happened to the captain. He had a right to know what was happening or about to happen. Nevertheless, the lieutenant-commander rarely told him what was contained in his sailing orders, and on this occasion not a word had been said beyond the customary orders for raising steam and for the manning of guns and torpedo-tubes during the night.

Intercepted enemy wireless might mean nothing. The speed of twenty-five knots, however, and the orders that ships’ companies were to be closed up at their action stations by 6 a.m. were not so ordinary. Something was in the wind, something out of the common. Kerrell could swear to that.