empty, even though there was water in No. 2 and the engineroom and stockhold.

The problem here, however, was not how to give the ship sufficient buoyancy to float, but how to make her light enough to float off the rock. She had been half-loaded when she went ashore, but as the cargo was discharged she had worked farther and farther up on to the rock until it was as if she had gone ashore empty, that is, at her minimum draft, whereas she was now partially loaded with water.

Had there been a big rise and fall of tide it would only have been necessary to make tight and pump out Nos. 1, 3, and 4, where the damage was obviously slight; but with a rise and fall of only six feet it was evident that the engine-room, stokehold, and No. 2 must be emptied also to give the necessary flotation. From the way in which the water rose and fell in these compartments with the tide, it was clear that there was very serious damage (local rumour said that there was a rook through the bottom of the engine-room), and this must somehow be dealt with.

Fine weather could only be expected until the end end of August or middle of September. We had therefore very little time, for already it was June 19th.

It was a time for quick decision; but I often wonder whether, had I been able to foresee the hazards and anxiety of the next few months, I should have decided as I

did, that we would make the attempt to salve the ship. Another decision had to be made at the same timewhether I should cable to England for our salvage steamer, which was ready to sail with motor- and steampumps, pneumatic tools, oxyacetylene plant, air compreɛsors, and all the rest of the gear necessary for salvage work, and a picked crew; or whether I should listen to the old salvage expert from the Baltic, charter a ship locally, collect pumps, diving gear, &o., and men in Archangel, and do the work with local resources.

This was not so wild an idea as it may seem, for I knew that in Archangel were a number of divers, engineers, &o., who had fled from the Baltic, and had had long experience with Captain G. before the war, and were really good workmen, as the Baltic salvage workers are known to be.

It would be at least a fortnight before our own ship could arrive, and then there was not enough water for her to come close to the wreck, Also, she could not carry as many men as it was obvious we should require, and I knew that the experiment of trying to make English and Russians work alongside each other would be foredoomed to failure. Moreover, there was to be taken into account the dead loss on wages, provisions, and, above all, bunkers, on the voyage to and from England. I therefore made up my mind to employ Captain G. and local labour. Though I

always had, and still have, a great admiration and even affection for Captain G. him. self, it would be hard to say how much I regretted this decision afterwards. The reasons will be apparent enough. Our decision made, the next step was to get to Archangel as quickly as possible. To any one who knows Russia it will be needless to say that the only boat had left the day before, that no one knew when there would be another boat, or, indeed, believed that there would ever be one. We were told that it would be quite useless to go to Popoff, the port of Kem, which was the port of departure for Arohangel, and that even if we determined to go there was no train. I was already a little suspicious of Russia, and therefore made my way to the station, struck up an acquaintance with an American private who was clerk to the R.T.O., and the following day we reached Popoff, to find a steamer just leaving for Archangel. There, two days later, we arrived, and began at once to collect men and plant.

There is a story of Conrad's -'A Smile of Fortune'which tells how the captain of a ship in a foreign port encountered an inexplicable shortage of the particular kind of bag which he needed imperatively for his loading, as a sequel to a very excusable loss of temper with a certain Mr Jacobus, of how his ship was delayed and he himself reduced to despair and to desperate remedies.

I was not conscious of having insulted any one, excusably or not, and came to the conolusion that the polite but persistent obstruction which I encountered from every Russian with whom I had business in Archangel was national characteristic or the result of the intrigues of the various interests which the prospect of buying the Ulidia for a song fading away from them.

I

I arranged to charter a tugboat, and she was promptly requisitioned by the harbour authorities. I engaged men, to find them immediately called up for military service. wanted to hire a donkeyboiler, and the owner discovered an urgent need for it, though previously it had not been used for months. I tried to book passages in the local steamer to take the men whom I had secured back to Soroka, and was informed by the agents that no accommodation was available, and by the Intelligence Branch that the necessary passes could not be issued.

All this only after long interviews, conducted through an interpreter, and by the end of a week I had formed a hearty dislike of Russians and everything Russian, and particularly of Archangel, which even the lapse of time has not dissipated.

The weather was very hot, and by the time I had made three or four journeys from one end of the interminable Troitzky Prospect to the other in a tram-car orowded with

I remember particularly the Chief Engineer of the Port. He had the unusual reputation of being an honest official, and perhaps deserved it; but he had a passion for conversation, for dockets and minutes and for red tape, which no one in a Government Office in England could hope to rival.

A few months ago the Bolsheviks shot him, I believe, and I am not surprised, for he was an irritating old

man.

Fortunately for me, the first person I met when I called at the office of the Principal Naval Transport Officer in Archangel was the D.N.T.O.- Captain Dawes, who was universally known in both services as one of the ablest officers in North Russia, as well as one of the best of fellows.

We had last shared a house together at Portsmouth, and this fact, coupled with a sympathetic dislike of Russians, made him find time to give me invaluable help. The Russian officials were terrified of him, for he had, a blunt method of dealing with them to which they were not accustomed. But he had a perfectly marvellous knack of getting things done, for he spared neither himself nor those under him, and it was entirely due to him that we got together the gear and men we wanted, and secured military exemptions and passports.

The small coasting-vessels of

made more or less regular Voyages between Archangel and Onega, Soroka, Kem, Kandalaksha, the ports of the White Sea, and on board one of these the salvage gear (such as it was) was loaded and the salvage party mustered.

The latter consisted of sixty odd men and three or four women. It was the first time I had heard of women on a salvage job, but all Russian ships carry women as cooke. The practice, dietetically, has something to be said for it, though it leads (however unprepossessing the ladies conoerned, and these had faces and figures apparently carved hurriedly out of well-seasoned mahogany with a blunt axe) to the troubles which might be expected.

The vessel's sailing was delayed by one of the divers, who, having drunk two bottles of whisky neat in quick suocession on the quay, fell off it into the Dwina, and was only rescued with some difficulty and much excitement. Eventually, however, we cast off, towing astern a small steamlaunch belonging to Captain G., and astern of that again a ship's lifeboat to serve as a diving boat.

The voyage across the White Sea, in radiant sunshine day and night, was very pleasant, and thirty-six hours after leaving Archangel, on the evening of 1st July, we came to an anchor off Soroka, which we had left ten days before, and boarded the Ulidia again.

Accommodation on salvage work is never luxurious. Men sleep and eat where and when they can. But though she may be carrying three or four times her proper complement, there is usually a salvage steamer aboard which the men live.

Our only salvage steamer was a tug-the Aleida Johanna -which, after protracted and irritating negotiations by interpreter with the engineer of the port at Archangel and by telegram with his opposite number at Murmansk, we had succeeded in chartering. She, however, was still at Murmansk, and at the best there was not room for more than a dozen men aboard of her.

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All hands had therefore to live on board the wreck, which, having been thoroughly looted and deserted for over years, did not at first sight look very habitable. But no Russian, given an axe and sufficient timber, would be homeless for more than a day; and on the morning after our arrival the ship was comfortable enough, the saloon and cabins oleaned out for us, and the poop and forecastle fitted for the men with new doors and double tiers of bunks, which bore an extraordinary family resemblance to those in a German dug-out. Indeed, many of the men, nearly all of whom were from the Baltic, were German in speech and appearance. The majority of them by birth were Letts

good workmen, clean, and studiously polite, with a deference to their employers which, whether it is to be regretted or not, has died out entirely in England. But though capable and industrious, they were of a shifty and violent temper.

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"Rovy," Captain G. (himself a Lett) would say in his broken English, "rovy, like a dog. A word, and the son kills the father and the father the son. You must keep him in the hand-so-strong-strong. So I keep him all my life." He was to find that the men were now not so easily to be kept "in the hand." Even "the black labour," as he called it, the carpenters and unskilled labourers from Archangel and Soroka itself, were alive to the political changes of the past year or so, and listened the more readily to the one or two agitators on board, and were the more dangerous from their childlike simplicity and entire lack of education.

The first evening they filled the entrance to the saloon to listen to the arrangements with regard to hours and details of work, a proceeding which, though they were respectful enough, aroused Captain G.'s indignation.

"Never have I seen this thing," he exclaimed. "I have him always like a dog treated before in my life." He was the kindest old man, and there is no doubt had considered his men and looked after them well, but he was no believer

Our first business, after the had settled themselves aboard, was to send off the orew for the Aleida Johanna by train to Murmansk, and the next to get steam on the wreck. Steam, the life-blood of a ship, to work the winches so that we could lower pumps and gear down into the 'tweendecks, and later to work the pumps themselves.

We had failed to get a donkey - boiler in Archangel, and the ship's donkey-boiler was at the same level as the main boilers, and therefore under water and useless.

I embarked on what I felt to be a fruitless search for a donkey-boiler in Soroka without any great confidence. The railway station and Belaieff's mill were drawn blank, but luck was with us (as on several Occasions afterwards), and I found at Stewart's, the mill on the east side of the bay just opposite the wreck, a new boiler which had been intended for a small tug-boat but never fitted.

It was some hundreds of yards from the beach, in a wooden house which had been built round it; it weighed two tons, and the local manager of the mill was very doubtful as to whether we could be allowed to have it, even at the inordinate price he put upon it. However, it was a very short time before the house was taken to pieces, the boiler hoisted on to a barge, towed off to the ship, and got aboard, and the engineers were busy

A certain amount of technicality is unavoidable if one is to follow the story of the next two months, and it is perhaps as well at this point to explain the plan of salvage which the diver's examination and our previous inspection led us adopt.

The soundings round the ship gave at high-water springtides 10 feet forward, 12 feet amidships, and 14 feet aft on the starboard side, which was the side furthest up on the ledge of rock. On the port side there was a foot more forward, 18 inches more amidships, and a couple of feet more aft.

The builders had telegraphed to us that for the vessel to float empty, and with no bunkers, but with ballast tanks full, she would require 7 feet 6 inches forward, 9 feet 6 inches amidships, and 12 feet 6 inches aft. We had not much to spare, therefore, and there was question of leaving the most severely damaged compartment alone. The vessel must be got into such a condition that all compartments could be pumped practically dry.

no

The fact that the water only rose and fell a few inches with the tide in the two after-holds (Nos. 3 and 4) showed that these were only slightly damaged. Actually we discovered the principal source of the leakage in No. 4-a rivet out in the side of the tunnel-the first day.

These two holds were therefore left alone until the time