silence of facts that remains.

The British Merchant Service has been challenged in its supremacy
before. It will be challenged again. It may be even asked

menacingly in the name of some humanitarian doctrine or some empty
ideal to step down voluntarily from that place which it has managed

to keep for so many years. But I imagine that it will take more
than words of brotherly love or brotherly anger (which, as is well

known, is the worst kind of anger) to drive British seamen, armed
or unarmed, from the seas. Firm in this indestructible if not

easily explained conviction, I can allow myself to think placidly
of that long, long future which I shall not see.

My confidence rests on the hearts of men who do not change, though
they may forget many things for a time and even forget to be

themselves in a moment of false enthusiasm. But of that I am not
afraid. It will not be for long. I know the men. Through the

kindness of the Admiralty (which, let me confess here in a white
sheet, I repaid by the basest ingratitude) I was permitted during

the war to renew my contact with the British seamen of the merchant
service. It is to their generosity in recognising me under the

shore rust of twenty-five years as one of themselves that I owe one
of the deepest emotions of my life. Never for a moment did I feel

among them like an idle, wandering ghost from a distant past. They
talked to me seriously, openly, and with professionalprecision, of

facts, of events, of implements, I had never heard of in my time;
but the hands I grasped were like the hands of the generation which

had trained my youth and is now no more. I recognised the
character of their glances, the accent of their voices. Their

moving tales of modern instances were presented to me with that
peculiar turn of mind flavoured by the inherited humour and

sagacity of the sea. I don't know what the seaman of the future
will be like. He may have to live all his days with a telephone

tied up to his head and bristle all over with scientific antennae
like a figure in a fantastic tale. But he will always be the man

revealed to us lately, immutable in his slight variations like the
closed path of this planet of ours on which he must find his exact

position once, at the very least, in every twenty-four hours.
The greatest desideratum of a sailor's life is to be "certain of

his position." It is a source of great worry at times, but I don't
think that it need be so at this time. Yet even the best position

has its dangers on account of the fickleness of the elements. But
I think that, left untrammelled to the individual effort of its

creators and to the collective spirit of its servants, the British
Merchant Service will manage to maintain its position on this

restless and watery globe.
FLIGHT--1917

To begin at the end, I will say that the "landing" surprised me by
a slight and very characteristically "dead" sort of shock.

I may fairly call myself an amphibious creature. A good half of my
active existence has been passed in familiar contact with salt

water, and I was aware, theoretically, that water is not an elastic
body: but it was only then that I acquired the absoluteconviction

of the fact. I remember distinctly the thought flashing through my
head: "By Jove! it isn't elastic!" Such is the illuminating force

of a particular experience.
This landing (on the water of the North Sea) was effected in a

Short biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air. I
reckon every minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what

I've got is mine, I am not likely now to increase the tale. That
feeling is the effect of age. It strikes me as I write that, when

next time I leave the surface of this globe, it won't be to soar
bodily above it in the air. Quite the contrary. And I am not

thinking of a submarine either. . . .
But let us drop this dismalstrain and go back logically to the

beginning. I must confess that I started on that flight in a
state--I won't say of fury, but of a most intenseirritation. I

don't remember ever feeling so annoyed in my life.
It came about in this way. Two or three days before, I had been

invited to lunch at an R.N.A.S. station, and was made to feel very
much at home by the nicest lot of quietly interesting young men it

had ever been my good fortune to meet. Then I was taken into the
sheds. I walked respectfully round and round a lot of machines of

all kinds, and the more I looked at them the more I felt somehow
that for all the effect they produced on me they might have been so

many land-vehicles of an eccentric design. So I said to Commander
O., who very kindly was conducting me: "This is all very fine, but

to realise what one is looking at, one must have been up."
He said at once: "I'll give you a flight to-morrow if you like."

I postulated that it should be none of those "ten minutes in the
air" affairs. I wanted a real business flight. Commander O.

assured me that I would get "awfully bored," but I declared that I
was willing to take that risk. "Very well," he said. "Eleven

o'clock to-morrow. Don't be late."
I am sorry to say I was about two minutes late, which was enough,

however, for Commander O. to greet me with a shout from a great
distance: "Oh! You are coming, then!"

"Of course I am coming," I yelled indignantly.
He hurried up to me. "All right. There's your machine, and here's

your pilot. Come along."
A lot of officers closed round me, rushed me into a hut: two of

them began to button me into the coat, two more were ramming a cap
on my head, others stood around with goggles, with binoculars. . .

I couldn't understand the necessity of such haste. We weren't
going to chase Fritz. There was no sign of Fritz anywhere in the

blue. Those dear boys did not seem to notice my age--fifty-eight,
if a day--nor my infirmities--a gouty subject for years. This

disregard was very flattering, and I tried to live up to it, but
the pace seemed to me terrific. They galloped me across a vast

expanse of open ground to the water's edge.
The machine on its carriage seemed as big as a cottage, and much

more imposing. My young pilot went up like a bird. There was an
idle, able-bodied ladder loafing against a shed within fifteen feet

of me, but as nobody seemed to notice it, I recommended myself
mentally to Heaven and started climbing after the pilot. The close

view of the real fragility of that rigid structure startled me
considerably, while Commander O. discomposed me still more by

shouting repeatedly: "Don't put your foot there!" I didn't know
where to put my foot. There was a slight crack; I heard some

swear-words below me, and then with a supreme effort I rolled in
and dropped into a basket-chair, absolutely winded. A small crowd

of mechanics and officers were looking up at me from the ground,
and while I gasped visibly I thought to myself that they would be

sure to put it down to sheer nervousness. But I hadn't breath
enough in my body to stick my head out and shout down to them:

"You know, it isn't that at all!"
Generally I try not to think of my age and infirmities. They are

not a cheerful subject. But I was never so angry and disgusted
with them as during that minute or so before the machine took the

water. As to my feelings in the air, those who will read these
lines will know their own, which are so much nearer the mind and

the heart than any writings of an unprofessional can be. At first
all my faculties were absorbed and as if neutralised by the sheer

novelty of the situation. The first to emerge was the sense of
security so much more perfect than in any small boat I've ever been

in; the, as it were, material, stillness, and immobility (though it
was a bumpy day). I very soon ceased to hear the roar of the wind

and engines--unless, indeed, some cylinders missed, when I became
acutely aware of that. Within the rigid spread of the powerful

planes, so strangelymotionless I had sometimes the illusion of
sitting as if by enchantment in a block of suspended marble. Even

while looking over at the aeroplane's shadow running prettily over
land and sea, I had the impression of extreme slowness. I imagine

that had she suddenly nose-dived out of control, I would have gone
to the final smash without a single additional heartbeat. I am

sure I would not have known. It is doubtlessotherwise with the
man in control.