anything which is not their legitimate job, redoubled their efforts, and the boat slid off the rocks across a strip of deeper water, and grounded gently on the sand. Helped by the swell, we coaxed her six inches at a time up the sand till the tide started to ebb, then secured her for the night. There was a certain captain in the Yorkshires for whom I shall always have a warm spot in my heart. Not only did he organise my military salvage party and arrange billets for my crew, but he gave me a room in his house. When I had finished work at about 11.30, I found a fire in my room, a hot-water bottle in my bed, and a hot toddy on the table! Could a man do more for a complete stranger! Next day we pulled out the four torpedoes through the bow tubes, and stripped the boat of everything which we could remove to lighten her, sending all the gear away in a lorry. Steel plates and sheets of rubber were brought round by the Bonaventure's repair party, and at low water we careened the boat and patched all the holes except two or three small ones right aft, which were buried in the shifting sand. We laid out two kedge anchors in the sand, one on either bow of the boat, attached a single block to the ring of each, and rove a hemp from the bridge through each block and away up the sand. Two tugs came out from the Tyne, VOL. CCXVIII.-NO. MCCCXXII. and made fast one behind the other on to a 4-inch wire secured round my conning tower. At high tide I went on the bridge and conducted the entertainment. The two bow-lines were again manned by soldiers, and I worked on each alternately till the boat started to roll slightly. Then I signalled to the tugs, "Slow ahead both." The tugs started to work up speed, so, foreseeing what would happen, I signalled "Stop!" They went on to full speed and the wire parted, and our efforts were wasted for the day. I was very disappointed, especially as the stern of the boat was getting more and more sanded up. That evening I discussed the matter with a retired salvage expert, and next morning all hands were busy filling sandbags, which we borrowed from the military. These bags, when filled, we built into two walls, making a V-shaped figure, the point of the V being at the stern of the boat, and the sides running down to the sea at an angle of 45 degrees to the water's edge. The idea of this is that the sea tends to sweep away the sand inside the walls why I don't know, but it certainly worked well on this occasion. Next day at high water I had all my crew on board, all the soldiers on the bow-lines, and two tugs, each one with its separate wire on to the conning tower-one towing north-east and the other south-east. It was an unusually high tide, and I did 2 K 2 not begin operations till the in writing out a service letter, top of high water. I started with a copy of my log and in with the starboard bow-line replies to all the questions reand south-eastern tug, then quired by King's Regulations vice versa. At the second effort to be asked in such cases. we shifted her stern sideways Carlin arrived from Whitley about a foot, and hope ran Bay, where he had been staying high: then she started to with the soldiers-quite unmove seawards slowly, getting known to me, ostensibly to faster and faster, and then off look after my private belongshe slipped with a run, both ings. He was a pensioner of tugs going full speed. I had the "Private Paget" type, a cobble standing by on each with a remarkable gift for side of the reef, and all hands narrative, and I'm certain that on the bridge in case of acci- his impressionable hosts were dents. The stern slid over the deeply thrilled by the experirocks easily enough, but the ences of "the first marine who boat drew more water amid- had ever been shipwrecked in ships. She started to go down a submarine." by the bow, and I was afraid we should get stuck again; but we were going fairly fast, so in spite of some fearful bumps we managed to "porpoise" over the ridge. The water came right up to our feet as she went down by the stern into the deep water on the far side of the rocks, while three of us stood on the conning tower lid to keep the water out of the boat, and the cobble closed to take us off if required. However, she floated on an almost even keel, though we found later, on docking, that she had two more large holes in the midship ballast tanks. We started off for our inglorious trip to to the Tyne in tow of a tug, and the cox'n produced a tot of rum all round to keep out the cold. "C8" was docked at Swan & Hunter's yard, where all defects were made good, and a Court of Inquiry was held in the Bonaventure, at which I had to answer a good many awkward questions. Taking into consideration my inexperience and the sketchy methods of navigation which one had to adopt in a "C" class submarine, I was let down lightly: "Lieutenant Powell is to be informed that he has incurred their Lordships' displeasure, and that he is to be more careful in future." When I received my message from the Admiralty, a senior officer said to me: "Well, everybody has to run aground once during his career, so you're lucky to get it over in a rotten little boat like 'C8.'" I swallowed the insult to my I spent next day, Christmas, first command. THROUGH THE LINES TO ABD-EL-KRIM'S STRONGHOLD IN THE RIFF. A JOURNEY RECENTLY UNDERTAKEN IN A LITTLE-KNOWN COUNTRY. BY GERALD SPENCER PRYSE. III. THE rivers are still mon- necessary; so everything not strously swollen on the ninth day, and mountains steaming in hot sunshine, when we take affectionate leave of the friends we possess in the household of Kayed Mohammed el Boccali, the chieftain himself being conspicuously absent when the time arrives. In point of fact, he has not been visible for several days, though the guesthouse adjoins his own establishment, and all our meals have been prepared in his kitchen. The askar make it abundantly clear there ought to be ceremony about such a departure; and the general assemblage, by their rather shamefaced air, show themselves of the same opinion. For one's own part, however, the dominant emotion is that of relief. We are half on the look-out for some trick, and it is no great surprise to find ourselves deprived of mules at a rendezvous outside the village, where, by the holding up of instructions from El Makhzen, we are compelled to resume the journey as common men on foot. The sense of lurking danger has made swift decision absolutely essential is quickly discarded, and the journey continued with only a twenty-four hours' allowance of bread and figs, and a few frowsy European garments in the bottom of a sack. Yet so great is the sense of relief, that the two following days are very cheerfully spent sliding about sodden mountains, in shoes that have to be tied together with fragments torn from the sack, neither of us being able to walk any distance in the loose sbabeet of the country. But one soon discovers compensations in all this. Not only has more intimate contact with the members of the Boccali house party been effected by their leader's churlishness, but the new intimacy with those around seems likely to continue. The fury of Mohammed the Askari is in itself a sustaining spectacle. That he, the pride of the Beni Ouariel, the fierce and trusted emissary of El Makhzen, should have been spurned by a beggarly Kayed of the Jabala! Somebody will be thrown into the Kaasba for this. One could not speak plainly to Boccali in his own household, but one may fearlessly toss out opinions on the open mountain. Meanwhile a forlorn little procession is struggling over slippery rocks, by ways that are hard to find, even where they have not been entirely blotted out by avalanches from above; or converted into cascades by the tendency of water to find its way through the nearest available channel to sea-level. Sometimes almost carried off one's feet by running streams, and sometimes sinking into a marsh; one wonders what even the most capable mule would have made of the problem. It is a day of mighty effort, sustained by still mightier curses. Everywhere is activity after the period of forced inaction. Troops of soldiers held up by the torrents are hastening by. Old women and children, household belongings piled on their backs, are continuing their task of refurbishing homesteads long deserted; men not away with the harka are occupied with the heavy work of ploughing up land recently recovered from the enemy, before it is too late; while women distribute seed. Already the sun is burning hot, and the heads of these toilers are crowned with straw hats possessing immense umbrella brims, worn over the handkerchiefs or towels without which they would never appear in public. Almost invariably their legs are enclosed in buskins from knee to ankle, to ward off thorns, a device which gives to these limbs a curiously the Arcadian appearance. The average colouring among the women, who are at such pains to shield themselves from the sun, is not so dark as one may observe in Southern Europe, and there are occasional blueeyed Scandinavian types to be encountered. I remember a girl, fair-haired and tall, with athletic limbs inadequately concealed by a striped cotton garment extending barely to the knees, who approached with so frank an expression of curiosity on her countenance, as to leave one in doubt whether she might not be some Brunhilde transported from the north, rather than the invariable Ayesha or Fatima of the country. That the Riffi descend from the same Iberian or Berber stock as do the Khabyles of Algeria and the inhabitants of the Atlas, seems evident. Yet they are differentiated by unmistakable traits from others of that race. One is driven to the conjecture that at some time Northmen have descended on a coast-line abounding in excellent little harbours from Taleses to Beni Boufra and Bades and Ajdir, as they did also in Yorkshire or Northumberland or Sicily. Here are rock bound bays in plenty, where ships might safely be pulled up on to the beach. Doubly isolated by mountain and by war, the Riffi themselves seem to have conserved the vestige of such an infusion, though it is less conspicuous among the inhabitants of the open, that one is irresistibly reminded of the English country as it must have been under the Heptarchy. Jabala, where Arab admixtures so How else should it have come about that people so little inclined to adventure as the Berbers became stirred all at once to furious activity, seizing the rock since called Jibel Tarek, and pushing their conquests into the heart of France? There is a Northern tinge about the records of Granada, quite distinct from any other achievements of an Eastern race, and the subsequent career of the Barbary pirates might have inspired Icelandic saga. Be this as it may, the tribal system is immediately responsible for the conservation of so many fine distinctions in type. Intertribal marriages are rare, and the Riffi in particular are fortified by other mountaineers to west and south, themselves little liable to infiltration from outside. So it has come about that to-day they are an agricultural and pastoral people, with established homesteads; and in manners so candid, and in fashions of conduct But already pleasant valleys with their inhabitants have been left behind, and we are creeping up the face of the cliffs. All day the little band scrambles slowly upward under a blazing sun until, on the approach of nightfall, it is time to cast about for supper and lodging. The authority from El Makhzen which has so far smoothed the way having been impounded by Boccali, we are dependent on the instinctive hospitality of the inhabitants of the districts through which our road lies. In the billet of an artillery officer, where no doubt courteous entertainment would have been afforded to the friends of the Sultan, we are now to experience the more intimate hospitality reserved for ill-used guests. The warmth of such a welcome cannot be surpassed. a Our host is in command of mixed battery of Soixantequinze and Schneider guns, for the moment posted on the hill above, but under orders to move forward to high ground overlooking Zinatz as soon as the flooded state of the wads will permit. He is apparently finding it dull to kick his heels so long in a back area while others are playing the game. But so far as his visitors are concerned, life in his billet is full of excitement. For has he not a hundred rounds of live shells stored in the apart |