Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/261

 every man's heart longed for. All that day they steamed slowly through treacherous waters, waters far more populous than those they had been frequenting. Mine layers and sweepers, sea-planes, torpedo boats, cargo boats, destroyers, chasers—they saw them all. They passed within sight of Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, with Portsmouth hiding around the corner of it, and finally Eastbourne, and by that time the coast of France was clear to the eastward, and a Channel steamer plowed past them quite as though war was a thing of the past. The cliffs of Dover loomed up toward evening, and it was then that Nelson saw mine sweepers actually at work for the first time. Directed by a saucy little patrol yacht, the two blunt-nosed trawlers steamed westward on parallel courses, a long cable connecting them. Although Nelson watched eagerly as long as they were within sight they apparently found no mines. They were still at it when distance and twilight hid them from view. Some time that night the Gyandotte emerged into the North Sea, for the next morning she was rolling merrily out of sight of land and the quartet of destroyers were rolling even more merrily ahead and astern, stretched out for nearly a mile. Nelson thrilled at the thought that somewhere to the east of them 236