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The Navy still remains the silent Service, but, as the need for reticence
is being relaxed by the triumph of our arms, we are beginning to learn
something, though unofficially as yet, of that "plaything of the Navy and
nightmare of the Huns"--the Q-boat:
She can weave a web of magic for the unsuspecting foe,
She can scent the breath of Kultur leagues away,
She can hear a U-boat thinking in Atlantic depths below
And disintegrate it with a Martian ray;
She can feel her way by night
Through the minefield of the Bight;
She has all the tricks of science, grave and gay.
In the twinkle of a searchlight she can suffer a sea-change
From a collier to a _Shamrock_ under sail,
From a Hyper-super-Dreadnought, old Leviathan at range,
To a lightship or a whaler or a whale;
With some canvas and a spar
She can mock the morning star
As a haystack or the flotsam of a gale.
She's the derelict you chartered north of Flores outward-bound,
She's the iceberg that you sighted coming back,
She's the salt-rimed Biscay trawler heeling home to Plymouth Sound,
She's the phantom-ship that crossed the moon-beams' track;
She's the rock where none should be
In the Adriatic Sea,
She's the wisp of fog that haunts the Skagerrack.
Recognition of services faithfully done is an endless task; but Mr.
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