TWENTY-TWO LIVES LOST.
"That is the sort of thing," she groaned, "which makes one long to be not a man but a god, to be able to wield thunderbolts and to deal out hell!" "Good for you, Gerry," a strong, fresh voice behind them declared.
"That's my job now.

Didn't you hear us shouting after you, Olive and I?
Look!" Her brother waved a telegram.
"You've got your ship ?" Thomson inquired.
"I've got what I wanted," the young man answered enthusiastically.

"I've got a destroyer, one of the new type--forty knots an hour, a dear little row of four-inch guns, and, my God! something else, I hope, that'll teach those murderers a lesson," he added, shaking his fist towards the placard.
Geraldine laid her hand upon her brother's arm.
"When do you join, Ralph ?" "To-morrow night at Portsmouth," he replied.

"I'm afraid we shall be several days before we are at work.

It's the _Scorpion_ they're giving me, Gerald--or the mystery ship, as they call it in the navy." "Why ?" she asked.
His rather boyish face, curiously like his sister's, was suddenly transformed.
"Because we've got a rod in pickle for those cursed pirates--" "Conyers!" Thomson interrupted.
The young man paused in his sentence.