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tired to gather fuller particu- loyalty of the old soldier.

lars, and at the next stop looked back through the window, to where 'Ammond was sitting in the bus with a dejected expression on his rather pale face. I motioned him to the window.

Rather than let the Colonel down, Hammond would face the ridicule that would inevitably be heaped upon him at the depot-as the man who got into reverse "by accident." If only that same spirit could

"Cheer up!" I rallied him. be brought into civil life, I "It wasn't your fault."

thought, well, there would be no need for volunteer busdrivers.

"No, sir," says he. 'But the Colonel's taken my tickets and money-bag, and says I've got to say as 'ow I was a-driving of 'er when the accident 'appened." "And where are you going beat. A lot of the drivers now ?

"Back to the depot to tell them I've smashed a bus. Me!" And the poor fellow groaned at the blow to his prestige. "I wouldn't 'ave minded so much if 'e'd bust the 'ingin, but to slip into reverse like that!— but I allays knowed 'e'd come to grief!"

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Never mind, Hammond. After all, it's the Colonel who matters to you, and he knows who did it."

"I ain't so sure o' that, sir. 'E's a funny man is the Colonel. When the policeman come up to look at the wreckage, 'e says to me, ''Ammond, I shall 'ave to swear at you for a-doing of it, so as they'll think it was you.' 'E's a-swearing now, I'll bet, and by the time 'e's 'ad 'is dinner 'e'll think as 'ow it was me. I know 'im! A funny man is the Colonel."

The Major rang the bell, 'Ammond retired, and off we went again; but as we went I thought much upon the splendid

That night, when we rolled back to the garage, we had put in eleven solid hours of it, and were all about dead

had already turned in on their straw beds, and the garage was not nearly so hilarious as it had been the previous night.

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Getting some of 'em in the neck!" remarked the Major cheerfully, looking along the row of sleeping volunteers. He was very happy at the moment, having made two and threepence on the day's run, and drawn his official ration of two packets of woodbines. "Some of 'em will be about dead by the time it's all over," he added.

The next day, being Saturday, there was very little doing after mid-day, and we had an easy time of it. The rear bodyguard decided to take an hour off for lunch, so I dropped them at the Berkeley on the outward trip, and picked them up on the return. The Major and I, the constable, and the "special" descended at a proper busman's shelter, where we wrestled with the toughest

steaks in London, though the "Pay for a hair-cut out of tea was a veritable delight. the till! It's as much as I dare do to give any change out of mine!"

Sunday was a holiday. There were no buses running anywhere, and I, personally, spent most of the day in bed.

Monday, after the first rush, was also a very slack day, and about three o'clock in the afternoon the conductor opened the trap-door to inquire what I thought about a hair-cut.

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"How's trade?" I asked. "Rotten," he informed me. There are a couple of weeds on the roof who'd be all the better for a walk-and honestly, our bodyguard is a disgrace! It's got Oxford hair in addition to the 'bags.'

Turning out of Oxford Street, we ran the bus across to Hay Hill, where we hid it up a yard we knew of. A few minutes' walk brought us to Dover Street, and we were soon in the hands of the barber. It was quick work, and as I strolled to the counter to pay my bill, a certain noble lord, upon whose shoulders rested the bag of his temporary trade, passed me.

"How much?" he asked. "Five-and-six, my lord," came the ready answer.

His lordship's hand went into the bag, and he paid his bill.

"Here! I say!" came a pathetic voice from behind me. And turning, I beheld the Major-still wrapt in his barber's slip-regarding the noble lord with amazed eyes. "How do you do it? he asked.

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Within half an hour we were back up the yard, and the constable having reported all clear, we stole out and crept into the stream of traffic viâ New Bond Street. We did very well for the rest of the day, and were nearly always full, though on the day's takings the Major was seven-and-apenny down by his tickets. He accused me of robbing the till to pay for my lunch, but when I proved him wrong, he suddenly remembered that the bodyguard had been very flush with cigarettes during the afternoon. The bodyguard, however, strenuously denied the foul charge, and also failed to

answer the Major's appeal to "go halves," on the grounds that as he had never shared the "profits," he could not expect them to share the "losses." In vain the Major pleaded that he had borne the nobler half of the beer expenses. The bodyguard was adamant. However, he got back on us later on by leaving us to pay for his dinner.

Towards the end our job became very monotonous. With the cessation of hostilities and the suppression of the rowdy youths who had been responsible for 90 per cent of the stone-throwing, we dispensed with our constable, and said good-bye to the faithful bodyguard. For a couple of days longer the Major and I con

tinued to drive round, but the spirit of the thing was dead, the back of the strike absolutely broken. On the Saturday we took our bus back for the last time, and said good-bye to the old garage. We had had a rollicking week of it, had formed a lot of new friendships, had come to appreciate the Metropolitan Police as we had never appreciated them before, and hammered our spoke into the wheel of freedom. It was all very good, but if ever the L.G.O.C. drivers or conductors are in need of sympathy from the long-suffering public, they need only apply to the volunteers who tried to carry on for them when they were called out on strike. It was hard work!

TALES OF S.O.S. AND T.T.T.

BY BENNET COPPLESTONE.

V. RED OR GREEN.

"GREEN to GREEN-or RED to RED,
Perfect Safety-Go Ahead."

as

Aids to two steamers were

FOUR verses, Memory, are printed in Appendix E of the Board of Trade's Regulations for the Examination of Masters and Mates. Upon the application of one of them-those two emphatic lines printed above-turned the safety of a great passenger steamer and more than fourteen hundred lives. It was towards the end of the same month of May in the same fatal year, 1914, as that in which the Unseen Lifeboat " of our last tale tossed unregarded in the North Atlantic. But the scene and the conditions have become wholly different. We have now to do with the St Lawrence River, a short distance below Father Point, where the noble stream widens out in a vast funnel opening towards the Atlantic. More than forty miles of water, twice the width of the Straits of Dover, stretch from bank to bank. The night was fine and generally clear, though now and then patches of fog drifted slowly over the quiet surface.. At the time with which we are concerned in this tale, between half-past one and two o'clock in the morning of 29th May,

moving

cautiously over this wide stretch of inland sea, observing one another at intervals, and keenly regardful of one another's proximity. In so ample a space, and with navigating officers on the alert, the possibility of a collision might have seemed too remote for calculation. Odds of a thousand to one against would have scarcely been worth taking. Yet the thousand to one chance came off. By one of those devilish tricks of misguidance with which the sea is always trying to confuse the senses and the minds of unhappy mariners, the two vessels were brought into violent contact. The passenger steamer, frightfully gashed from bilge keel to shelter deck, instantly heeled over, and sank within a quarter of an hour. Of the passengers and crew nearly one thousand were lost. And it all happened because of the wrong conclusion drawn by one officer from a momentary glimpse of a coloured lamp.

A steamer at night carries white lights on her masts, and coloured lights on either beam. The starboard, right-hand, light is green and the port, or left

hand, light is red. These colours are easy to remember if we will bear in mind that though chartreuse may be green, port is always red. An officer on the bridge of one vessel may approximately determine the bearing and course of another vessel, in relation to his own, by carefully observing the disposition of these lights. Suppose, for example, one sees a green sidelight and two masthead lights widely spaced; one can conclude that the ship is showing her starboard side and is crossing one's own course. If the masthead lights appear to close up (one is placed higher than the other), then it can be judged that the distant ship is turning her bow or her stern towards oneself. If this should happen, the green light disappear, and the red light be seen, then there has been a swing round relatively to oneself, and the vessel is now showing her port instead of her starboard side. This language of lights and colour, with which many readers will be familiar, is of high importance in the navigation of all waters, and most important of all in narrow waters. An error of interpretation, especially when observation is interrupted by fog or haze, may lead to the gravest disaster-as it did in the lamentable case of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's Empress of Ireland and the Norwegian steamer Storstad, in the early hours of 29th May 1914.

Then, in order fully to understand the devastating sudden

ness and completeness of the disaster which sent the Empress to the bottom in less than fifteen minutes-a vessel built at Fairfield on the Clyde, and embodying in her bulkheads the conclusions of the Board of Trade Bulkhead Committeewe must realise how frail a work of art is a modern steel steamship, and how unstable as soon as the inflow of water in large volume sets at naught the designs of her builders. The plates of the Empress of Ireland were less than an inch thick. Her decks were less than half an inch thick. She weighed 18,000 tons. This was the actual displacement weight, not measurement tonnage. The Storstad, loaded with 10,400 tons of coal, weighed nearly 14,000 tons in all. Though the speed of the Storstad at the moment of impact was slow, and the jar of the collision seemed no greater than the bump of a cross-channel steamer against a pier-head, yet the bows of the Storstad striking the Empress almost at right angles, cut a gash through her side and decks fifteen feet deep and twenty-five feet wide, at least. The Storstad, built on the Isherwood system with longitudinal frames, was like a sharp heavy battering-ram striking a loaded box on its weak side. Think of the inertia of those two vast weights, of the one which could not be stopped and of the other which could not give before the blow. The old wooden ships, with their stout elastic timbers and their light weights,

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