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By WARREN ARMSTRONG

N THE dining-saloon the second steward was clearing away an assortment of plates, cut-
' lery, cups and saucers. Each time he edged sideways through the door that opened on
» the alleyway there was heard the sound of water gurgling down a wastepipe. It indicated
jiat the Old Man was taking his morning bath.

The first mate, nicely balanced in his swivel chair, twiddling a toothpick, said, “Day in,
ay out, I've heard that sound these past fifteen years. Breakfast wouldn’t be the same with-

IT haven’t seen our marks for a
helluva lone time, now. But, as
I was saying: if ola Sam could
take a squint at it at this very
moment, he’d die a second death.
Of mortification!”

“Amen to that,” said Sparks.
“But, after all, don’t you think
Sam’d be the first to ‘draw a line’
at loadlines when it came to cart-
ing the goods to knock the stuff
ing out of Hitler and his Axis
gang?”

The mate regarded the wireless
Operator more in sorrow than
anger. “What you want to do,
m'lad,” he said, “is to get busy
polishing up those knobs and
bits pieces of yours. We'll be
breaking silence maybe within
twenty-four hours or so... .?

e
SPLIT SECOND later the
alarm was sounding “Action
Stations.” Tess than 15 minutes
later still 2a long-range enemy
bomber had hit the seas and dis-
appeared in a miniature mountain
of grey-green, yellowish-red, and
a lifeboat has Swung clear to pick

up the survivors.
That should be the end of this

The writer was the fuest. — =.

The bath-water had gurgied that
morming away through a waste-
Pipe which ran neatly along a
wall of the attractive villa, over-
looking a certain famous river
mouth “somewhere in Britain.”
This was an epie occasion, for the
writer had not met the Old Man
since mutual experiences off the
beaches of Dunkirix.

The Old Man’s wife was folding
a newspaper into four, and she
Said: “Dad must have had a dan-
§erous voyage, didn’t you, Dad?”

The Old Man grunted, and said.
“Bishing?"’ We cocked an in-
quisitive eye at her, and added,
“Mebbe, you wouldn’t call it ex
actly a beanfest. But we got the
stuff there.’ :

The Old Man's wife was help-
ing him to two rashers of bacon;
then, carefully and lovingly, she
deposited a eolden orb, sur-
rounded by milky-white, on top of
the rashers. After which, she
returned to the newspaper, and
said, “Did you see the case of a
woman fined for food offences,
who protested that she was ‘one
of the gentry’ and that the
‘gentry have had to put up with

. . the old raseal !”
And the second mate, shoving
S enormously lanky lees com-
rtably beneath the table, hazard-
@> whe guess: “Mebbe he’s fot-a
cial date up in town? T
suldn’t be surprised to see him
ck aboard about noon with a
Spiciousookine bulge in his in-
ie breast pocket.”
“Booze?” asked Sparks.
“Booze be damned!” replied the
ate. “E expect our learned friend
re is hinting at the Ola Man
tting sealed orders this morn-
=. I knew where he was going,
-.- and he looked purposely
kance at his junior. “.. . but
n too long in the teeth to say
¥ piece in front of W/T oper-
ors. They talk too much. CGan’t
Ip it ... it’s part of their job!”
Se
T PRECISELY ten o'clock in
\* the forenoon the Old Man was
fusing the offer of a ride in an
‘ator, and set about climbing
With amazing agility for his
ars — to the seventh floor of an
posing whitestone building,
& few minutes later he was sit-
§ comfortably in a leather up-
Istered armchair, drawing
wiy and with great content
mt at a 9-inch-lone cigar, and
ening to a wiry, steel grey-
red U.S. Nayy officer, who was
ring:
Wsee, Cap'n, how it is? T’ve
- personally seen yr cargo, but
- we-e-ll .. . from the Bill here
figure you've taken something
2 three million dollars’ worth
cargo aboard. That’s — pretty
2 2. uh |. . something like
en-fifty thousand pounds worth
your money, Cap'n. And neither
2 in this war can afford to
it! There's no convoy listed
your route for the next two
three weeks, so it’s a case of
ne Ship’ for you, this voyage.”
Suits me,’ said the Old Man.
And am I to know when we
1; how we sail, or where we
toe!
‘he nayy nian smiled: “You are,
yn. Forty-eight hours after
?ve cleared you'll know ali you
ht. ¥ou'll find the information
Ide this...’ and he pushed
bulky, buff-colored envelope
oss the desk to the Old Man.
G
WO days later the Old Man
took the envelope’ from a
eon-hole in his chartroom desk.
med it, and then set his course:
* more than fifty hours now
Fe had been no sight of land,
{ no hint that anything that
ed or flew on, under, or over
seas was anywhere in the
nity.
jen he had thoroughly digest-
the contents of the buffcolored
elope, he tooks a walk around
it few square inches of deck
be were left for taking such a
k. In actual fact, he was forced
pick his way — like a cat
tne suburban chimney-pots —
And out of the most amazing
By of deck cargo he had seen

4

E

in Something like fifty years sea-
faring.

Being bombers, fighter aircraft,
General Grants and 2uns had
come a-rolling off American pro-
duction lines, and had then been
duly transported to a destination
“somewhere on the United States
coast.”

And it looked to the Old Man as
he trod what little iron deck was
left vacant that damn near every
available piece of armament pro-
duced in the past month had been
specially loaded aboard his old
hooker.

From fo’e'sie-head to the stern
icebox — destined to be the chief
stewards’ worst headache through-
out this voyage — the deck was
packed tight So tight, in fact,
that the Old Man made a mental
note that Chips and the bosum
and a couple of ordinary seamen
would have to rie some sort of
navigating bridse above the wheel-
house, pretty night level with the
top of the funnel, or else it would
be a mighty poor outlook for the
lookout and helmsman!

If the old hooker hit anything —
or if anything hit the old hooker
— hard, well... the steyedores
had put in something like a couple
of thousands tons of cargo “trim-
Ming,” in the shape of high-
explosive, beneath decks, that
could send the ship skyward.

extreme secrecy is the essence
of success and defense for lone
ships, hundreds of which are on
the seven seas today. Their voy-
ages are lonely voyages, and
mainly unspectacular. And al-
though the lone ships may never
Sight an escort, nor friendly air-
craft, the combined navies oper-
ating along their routes know all
about them. A warship can be
sent speeding to a lone ship’s
position at any time of the day or
night. The rest is—secrecy.

)
OWARDS the end of that week
the weather broke, with a
breezy red dawn and the promise
and threat of much worse to
come.

At sun-up on the eighth day,
rattling seas were bursting against
the freighter, getting in some
telling blows, whipping and
sereeching at her squat hull and
then greedily sucking beneath her
great rounded belly.

On the tenth day the alarm was
sounded, and the crew mustered
at their stations, buckling on life-
jackets. The 47 in. gun, capable
of flinging 50-pound shells, and
the 3-in. ack-ack, firing twelve-
pounders, were stripped and man-
ned.

And all the time the alarm was
in operation ,the Old Man in a
shirt, faded blue trousers and
ropesoled shoes, got on with his
self-chosen job, which was putting
the finishing touches to a varie-
gated and chequered color scheme
on a huge raft — a color scheme
which he himself had designed
specially to make the raft more

ut it. But he seems to be taking a longer time than usual this morning, titivating himself

easily spotted from the air.

When the alarm ended without
incident the crew turned to and
straightened out the troubles left
over by the “blow.” And that was
no mean job with more than half
@ million pounds’ worth of vital
ywar supplies to tend, and with
something like £100,000 worth of
it stowed on deck, subject to wear
and tear by old mother nature
herself before it ever reached the
hands of the men who would in
good time hurl it against the
enemy,

Three days out from the ship’s
destination the water in the Old
man’s bathroom went gurgling
down the wastepipe just as the
mate was saying: “TI ree’n old Sam
Plimsoll’d turn in- his grave if he
Saw a ship loaded like this old
tub’s loaded. If anyone ever rub-
bed out all the good Sam did for
merchant seamen, Hitler certainly
has! Myself, I’ve had most of the
worries I want in ships with their
*tween-decks opened up, which is
an operation calculated to give
any navigating officer a nasty

headache. But none of ’em was ~

anything compared with this little
Jot, I'll stake my oath!”

Sparks swallowed a forkful of
dry hash before he spoke. Sparks
was a bit of a bookworm. He
said:“From what I know of Plim—
soll, wasn’t he the bloke who first
made his name by writing a book
ealled, “A Plan to Have Father-
less and Motherless Children
Cared for Instead of being Con-
Signed to the Workhouse’?”

“He was that,” said the second
mate. “What's more, Sam Plimsoll
had the right idea.

“Se had a helluva fight when
he first tabled his resolution call-
ing for the introduction of the
load-line .. . for more than three
years all the other M-P.’s laughed
his ideas out . . . and, before he
was able to get what he wanted
he had to do two things: leave
those unfortunate orphans of his
to the tender mercies of work-
houses and produce exhibits back-
ing up his arguments,

@
ITHER of you two happen to
know which exhibit finally
did the trick? An insurance
policy! And, after that, Sam went
on to ‘denounce the gangs of
rascally owners in Liverpool and
London who were trading men’s
lives to their profit’ Well ‘
maybe it was so, in those days.
But I reckon Britain should've
given Plimsoll an honest-to-zood-
ness memoria].”’

“You would!” replied the mate.
“Your kind never learns. You've
been away to sea all these years,
and not yet realized that you've
sailed with his memorial every
time you left port: Old Sam’s
‘memorial is that little ‘white
horizontal line, bisecting the white
circle, exactly a foot in diameter,
which, in case you don’t know,
shows the general depth beyond
which a vessel may not be loaded.

‘

true story of the lone ship. But
it isnt...

In times like this it is impossibie
to say where the ship docked. It
is equally impossible to tell when
next she reached her home port.
But reach it she did, and two days
after she tied-up, the Old Man
wandered happily down to break-
fast with his wife and a guest.

a ‘lot of rudeness’ in this war?”

The Old Man said: “‘God bless
m’soul! Lye got old-fashioned
ideas... .that’s the reason why
gentry to me mean folk like the
men who bring the food to Bri-
fain!” He polished off the last
piece of fried bread and egg with
a fine relish. “God bless m’soul!
Eh, dear?”

The Soviet Union’s
Far Eastern Outpost

MOSCOW.
SL ISLAND, lying off the east coast of Siberia,
north of Japan, formerly isolated and a world apart
from the rest of the Soviet Union, is now humming with
activity. Moskalyo, on the western shore, used to be only
a trappers’ haven, but today it is a busy port town and
the gateway to the Sakhalin oil fields.

Day in and day out oil is pumped into barges and
tankers at this port, then carried across the Tartar Straits
to refineries of the Soviet Far East. The town of Okha
is the centre of the Sakhalin oil industry.

Strictly speaking, Sakhalin oil fields began to be ex-
ploited 15 years ago by the government, but it wasn’t
until very recently that the majority of the derricks were
elected. Okha, itself, is a little boom town, with fine clubs,
hospitals and schools. At every turn you learn of some-
one who has set a record in well drilling speed, or another
who has just completed sinking a new well, or a third

-who has restored an abandoned one.

The most popular names in the town are Volkov and
Zrayeva. Volkoy, an old oil foreman, has rounded upa
group of novices and in his spare time is teaching them
the intricacies of oil extraction. Vera Zrayeva is a young
lady who has gone far in the oil industry since the be-
ginning of the year.

Her unit is composed of wives and daughters of oil
workers who answered an appeal by the government to
help work in the oil fields.

“It was hard work at first,” says Vera. “We were as-
signed a section and were told to produce oil, and it was
a mystery to all but two of us — myself and another
woman. But the women were eager and even devoted
their spare time to learning, and now they are doing as
well as some of the men.”

“More oil for the front” is the motto of every crew on
the island.

At Kantagei there is no problem of getting the oil out
of the ground. The task is how to get it shipped. There
is no railway, and sea-going vessels have made attempt
after attempt to reach the shore, but in vain. This year
several small river steamers, towing barges, crossed the
stormy Tartar Straits into Okhotsk Sea, rounded the
northern promontory of the island and reached the Bay
of Noliki. From that point Kantagei’s oil was shipped.

Alexandrovsk is the capital and oldest town on Sak-
halin Island. Under the ezars it was used chiefly as a
penal colony, but under Soviet rule the town now boasts
of many new homes, clubs, theatres and food plants.

Not fax from Alexandrovsk, near the Tartar Straits,
are the collieries where, this year, the miners completed
the season’s coal output by the end of October.

Pe nag