should come to pump them out. In the engine-room the diver found that three manhole doors were off and had disappeared. Here, doubtless, was the origin of the story of the rook through the bottom of the engine-room, no doubt circulated by the same individual who had removed the doors, and had wished in this way to deter any one else from attempting salvage. of the bottom we could only guess at, for it was impossible for the diver to get underneath the vessel, sitting flat down on the rock as she was, but we knew that there could be very little of it intact. The scheme proposed was to build a cement bulkhead, six feet broad by six feet high, inside wooden box right across the whole width of the ship (42 feet) in the stokehold against the bulkhead between New manhole doors had to it and No. 2 hold, and another be made and fitted. There was no double bottom in the stokehold, and it was here that we anticipated serious trouble. Fortunately, the divers could find none underneath the boilers; but the bulkhead between the stokehold and No. 2 hold had given way at the bottom, and it was evident that at this point (where the ship was apparently resting on a small ledge of rook slightly above the level of the rest) there was considerable damage. In No. 2 hold there were a large number of rivets out in the tank top, which was badly set up, the seams of the tank were leaking, and in one place the bottom of the bulkhead between No. 2 and No. 1 holds had given way. In No. 1 hold, as in No. 2, there were numbers of rivets gone, and the seams of the tanks were opened out. It must be understood that there was never any question of making the ship's bottom water-tight. If she were to float at all she must float on her tank tops. The condition similar bulkhead in No. 2 hold against the other side of the original bulkhead. These two cement bulk heads would, in fact, constitute at once a new water-tight bulkhead between the stockhold and No. 2 hold, and a patch over the damage to the bottom at this point. A third cement bulkhead was to be built against the damaged portion of the bulkhead between No. 2 and No. 1 holds. It was necessary to make these bulkheads six feet high, though it was only the bottom of the ship's bulkhead which was damaged, in order to have sufficient weight of cement on top of the damage to resist the pressure of the water, which would try to force its way in when the ship was pumped out. It will be appreciated that these bulkheads had to be built by the divers under water. The method was as follows: The wooden box, or rather wall, was constructed by the carpenters on deck in sections made to fit exactly into each other. It was made of 4-inch deals, which were fitted as closely as possible and caulked, to make them water-tight. The bottom (where it rested on the tank top) was fitted with a big "pudding" or sausage of canvas filled with hemp for the same purpose. These sections were weighted and sent down to the diver, who placed them in position six feet away from the ship's bulkhead, until there was a wooden wall right across the Vessel. He then went down and proceeded to fill the space between this wall and the ship's bulkhead with cement. This was mixed dry in the 'tween - decks with sand and stones, and sent down to him, on the endless chain principle, in iron canisters with a canvas bottom fastened with a slipknot. He would open the bottom of the canister as close to the ground as possible and spread the cement with his foot as it fell out, when it would, of oourse, mix with the water. Fortunately for us, there was a quantity of cement at Murmansk, and more fortunately still, there was a vessel due shortly to leave for Kem, only four hours' distance by sea from Soroka. A hurried cable to the D.N.T.O. produced a promise to ship 300 barrels (at £2, 12s. 6d. a barrel) within a few days. Meanwhile there was plenty to do in constructing the wooden bulkheads, in cleaning away the debris from the engine-room and stokehold, in strengthening the ship's der ricks and rigging new running gear, in bringing aboard and cutting to size heavy 16-inch logs from Stewart's mill with which to shore down the tanktops to stand the pressure when the ship should be pumped out; in connecting up steam pipes all over the vessel and persuading the rusted winches to work again, in taking accurate soundings in the direction in which the ship should be taken out when she floated, in strengthening the poop and the after-hatch coamings with timber, outting a hole in the poop and fitting a fairlead (without pneumatic tools) so that the ship could be heaved off to an anchor laid out on the port quarter, in lowering pumps down into the holds and connecting up suctions, and in half a hundred other directions. The only pumps we had been able to procure were two Worthington pattern steampumps each with two 6-inch suctions, a 4-inch steam Worthington and a 2-inch. Captain G. was very confident that these were all we should need, and that cement bulkheads would be so water-tight that the ship could be pumped absolutely dry. Fortunately I (by this time regretting-too latemy ship with all her gear in England) believed in taking no chances, and sent a wire asking that a 12-inch Allen motor-pump (capacity 750 tons per hour) should be sent out with a good motor engineer from England te Archangel by the next ship But how dependent we were to be on that motor-pump, and how good the motor engineer was to prove himself, I never dreamed at the time. Throughout July the work went well. The Aleida Johanna left Murmansk, thanks to Captain Beck, D.N.T.O., after a last attempt on the part of the Russian authorities to stop her and cancel the charter, and duly arrived at Soroka. The cement arrived at Kem and was brought round in barges. Thenceforward the divers lived below in water the colour of milk, and the 'tweendecks were thick with cement dust that filled the hair and the eyebrows and the lungs of the men who mixed it. Five hours on end the divers would remain below, and then would come up and turn the pump for five hours for their relief, -a spectacle that would have sent the Secretary of the National Divers' Union of Great Britain into a rapid decline. For in this country the diver is a great man and will not even carry his own helmet. The deck was knee-deep in shavings from the fresh-out wood, and the continual clangings and hammerings from the engine - room told of activity there. The hands turned to at 7 A.M. and worked to 7 P.M., with an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. The skies were blue and cloudless, the sun shone continually with just sufficient warmth to be pleasant; the clear that looking over the side one could see on the bottom every rock, and every tin that had been thrown overboard. The launch-Permoshnik, or Assistance-puffed in every morning the five miles to Soroka for stores, in charge of one "Rat-Whiskers," an old man in whose veins was salt water instead of blood, who would live at sea until his soul passed into a gull, and whose irritating habit it was, when he went in alone with the launch, to tie up for as long as possible alongside the pier and sleep, when the launch was most needed at the wreck. Rations we got on repayment from the local British A.S.C. officer, who had been called upon to feed so many strange people that he had lost the faculty of surprise. His flook included the British troops in the district, the Serbians, all the native population, the workers on the railway, a few casual Americans, French, and Italians, Bolshevik prisoners, and several hundred sleigh-dogs left over from the winter (who, however, fed largely on each other). All these had different scales of rations, and when they paid, paid different prices in different currencies. "Salvage," therefore, was only a matter of another daily indent, and "Rat Whiskers" and the A.S.C. sergeant were goon on the best of terms,-particularly as our rations were "full-scale," and included both rum and cigarettes. The men would come in every evening to the saloon by of paper; of notices in the parks their ratings-divers,engineers, in Petrograd, "No dogs or carpenters, blacksmiths, crew soldiers admitted"; of officers of the Aleida Johanna, orew of who struck and flogged their the Permoshnik-for their tot of men, but never went round rum and their packet of cigar- their trenches; of how he himettes, and afterwards would sit self had fought in the battle about for an hour or two on of Tsushima and seen the deck, clustering round two Russian fleet betrayed and who played on their mando- destroyed by the incompetence lines and sang little Russian of its officers; and of the corsongs, now grave now gay, in ruption at the heart of all voices of a singular sweet- Russian Government and all Russian institutions. ness. The sun would go down, for we were too far south for the midnight sun, but there would be no darkness. Kischfeldt, the captain of the Aleida Johanna—a huge man with a great heart, before the war the youngest captain in the East Asiatic Company from Libau to New York, and master of the Kursk, a 14,000ton ship-with a passionate fondness for music, would talk to me of "La Tosca," which he had last heard in Odessa and I at the Opera Comique, or hum an air from "Pagliacci," his favourite opera and mine. Or he would tell me of what he had seen in the Baltic during the revolution-of the officers of the battleships slaughtered or thrown overboard with weights at their feet, so that when the wife of one sought to recover his body, the diver she sent down found them upright like trees at the bottom of the harbour, swaying to the tide. He would tell, too, of what led up to it all. Of how he had seen train after train fall of troops going up to the line with no arms at all, with uniforms of shoddy, and boots That Russia was ripe for democracy he did not believe, but he pretended to no regret at seeing the old régime wiped out in blood. Nor could one wonder when one saw the puppet Government we had set up in Archangel and the arrogance of the officers who paraded the Troitsky in epaulettes and spurs, and showed no disposition to go nearer the front. fre The necessity for procuring various stores took us quently to Popoff, the port of Kem, and occasionally to Archangel. The D.N.T.O.'s mess at Popoff was a very welcome port of call. There was a young and very cheery crowd there, who spent their spare time in learning the language of affection in Russian, and in organising dances at which they competed for the favours of the beauties of the village, whose names I have forgotten but whose dancing I remember. It was curious to watch in the Y.M.C.A. hut, to the sound of a concertina, dances which one had seen at the Russian ballet a few months before at the Alhambra, done with no less grace. Considerable indignation was felt at the time at the conduct of certain young Flying officers who had gained what was felt to be an unfair advantage over the Navy by having parcels sent out specially from Venns containing garments caloulated to revolutionise the ideas of the maidens of Popoff. It was at Popoff, too, that there occurred an example of poetic justice. A fatigue party was being marched down the plank - road, carrying corrugated iron. To my surprise, the right-hand man of the leading section of fours was my late Bn. H.Q. mess cook in France, who, coming to me in great distress, and out of work after demobilisation, had been given a job at 14s. a day, which he had thrown up at the end of a week. His bad cooking I had suffered in silence for some months, but his ingratitude I was glad to see suitably rewarded. Towards the end of July I heard that the 12-inch motorpump had arrived in Archangel, and went over with the Aleida Johanna to collect it. I found in charge of it a small motor engineer about twenty years old, whom I had not previously met. His voice showed that he came from the Tyne, and his look that he preferred Newcastle to Archangel. He paid very little attention to me beyond telling me that he had had to come away at a day's notice, and had not had time to get all the spares he wanted, and devoted himself entirely to the pump, on which he would allow no Russian to lay a sacrilegious finger. Both he and I watched it with a good deal of anxiety as, a day or two later, it went up the side of the Ulidia and was lowered down No. 2 hold for the ship's derricks had not been improved by two years' neglect, the pump weighed a ton and a half, and the box containing its suctions and steel dischargepipes three tons. However, it was got safely down into the 'tween-decks and pushed aft against the bulkhead. The purpose of this was that, by cutting out a plate in in the the bulkhead, and by having one set of suctions in the stokehold and another in No. 2 hold, the pump could be made available for whichever compartment most needed it. The law of the obstinacy of inanimate objects, which usually ordains that there shall be a stanchion or something of the sort in precisely the most awkward possible position, did not operate in this case; for immediately above the pump was a ventilator, and up this the 12-inch steel discharge-pipes were led. A bend on the top allowed the pump te discharge clear over the side near the gangway. This led to a number of alarms and excursions; for Reay, the motor engineer, from his position at the pump in the 'tween-decks, never knew whether or not there were boats alongside when he started |