a convincing character. destroyers were satisfied, and having collected enough evidence to establish the identity of the U-boat, and put its destruction beyond doubt, proceeded on their way, leaving a huge lake of oil, a motley assemblage of jetsam, and enough dead fish to feed a nation.

Fritz was not always so easy a prey, and there was one particular submarine which gave endless trouble and still lived to tell the tale. His speciality was to lie off the Firth of Forth, watch the drifters sweeping a channel for the Fleet, and re-sow it with mines the moment they had signalled "all clear." A most troublesome and annoying neighbour he proved. The Fleet tried this way and that to catch him, and at length organised a hunt with kite balloons. Whether this would have been successful one cannot say, for it was brought to an untimely conclusion before the balloons had the opportunity of using their powers. In the fashion cubbing, the hunt set out for its rendezvous in the dark, while the "fox," regardless of the rules of the game, came to meet them. Chuckling quietly, one imagines, he laid his unholy booby-traps in their path, and with never a yoick or a tally, the chase was brought to an end by the leading destroyer butting a mine in the pitch darkness. It takes sportsman to dare the strongholds of a fleet, and one would not grudge this fellow a smile

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But that the Germans held the balloons in respect was shown by the fact that no convoy which they accompanied was ever attacked. From first to last the reports were always "negative," which was an adequate answer to the argument that balloons were a danger because they betrayed the ships' position to the enemy. They may have done so; but if he was afraid to approach, it did not greatly matter. The "balloonatics" would have liked it better if he had, for that would have given them the opportunity they sought.

war

It was the lasting regret of all observers that the terminated without their ever taking part in a big sea fight. At the time of Jutland, only Campania was fitted with a balloon, and she, by force of circumstance, circumstance, was prevented from being present at the battle. Had a great engagement developed later, it is difficult to conceive that the observation afforded by the balloons would have failed to confer on the Fleet a signal advantage. One had but to be present at an exercise and compare the clear cold panorama of a thousand feet with the view from the foretop, the latter obscured by the rolling smoke screens,

smudged by the cordite blasts, and veiled so that the next ahead was often all but invisible in the reek, to realise the scope of even a single brain lifted right above the welter. Training, practice, and organisation were doubtless necessary, but the potentialities were there. A senior officer who spent a couple of hours ruminating in a balloon expressed himself decidedly on the point.

"This," he said, "is the place for me in the next scrap."

But the next scrap never came. When the Fleet went out to meet the Germans for the last time, every gun was loaded and every man at action stations, but no shot was fired. The enemy came slowly, and, obedient to the signal of the Commander-in-Chief, followed meekly in the wake of the cruiser Cardiff, flying a solitary kite balloon. After the labour and preparation of four years, a sense of anti-climax hung heavily over the Fleet, and the prevailing mood was one of faint depression. One must add that not every one was so afflicted. Admiral de Robeck, for instance, watching the huge warships shepherded in by his favourite "Baby," was moved to a chuckle, and delivered a Biblical quotation which was strangely apposite.

"And a little child shall lead them," he said; and, pleased with the thought, had it made by signal to the Commanderin-Chief. Stimulated by this flight of wit, he permitted himself to have a poke at the Admiral on board the Cardiff,

1415. Many thanks. The only thing that spoiled the honour was nearly drowning the observer."

Such little touches served to lighten what was in the main a depressing affair. No man, certainly no sea man, likes to witness the humiliation of a courageous and (on the whole) gallant foe. As the German ships dropped their anchors and everything was over, the commander of one of the battle cruisers turned to the balloon officer standing near him, and made a remark which seemed to typify the feelings of the Navy on this the last act of the He said

"Come and have a cocktail. I hate a funeral."

THE Chevalier de Johnstone was born at Edinburgh in 1719, the only son of James Johnstone, grocer. There was good blood in his veins his grandmother was a Douglas of Whittinghame, and kinship counts in Scotland, or did. His kinswoman, Lady Jane Douglas, sister of the Duke of Douglas, was a second mother to him.

A faulty upbringing and the Douglas blood may be held accountable for a wild and wayward youth. He was indulged by his mother, a weak and lovable woman, while his father, an Episcopalian and Jacobite, was austere as any Covenanter. By his own admission he was impetuous, obstinate, fiery, passionate and headstrong, volatile, careless of his studies, and plunged in libertinism. Of any thing low or contrary to honour and probity he was incapable.

Johnstone was not wholly free from these traits in later life. Some did him disservice. Others, tempered by hardship and danger, kept his head upon his shoulders after Culloden.

The career of a soldier of fortune was the only one open to the son of a known Jacobite sympathiser, if he had, as was the case with Johnstone, a predilection for the profession of arms. He had two uncles in Russia, Lieut.-General Douglas, Governor of Revel, and Mr Hewitt, his mother's brother,

formerly a favourite of Peter the Great, now retired, and he hoped by their influence to enter the Russian service. His father opposed him in this, as in almost everything he desired.

When he was eighteen he endeavoured to force his father's hand, and failed. Lady Jane Douglas was his accomplice. He resolved to visit Russia, and she cajoled the father into giving a grudging consent. A year spent in Russia at this impressionable age was formative, but unproductive. His uncle Hewitt had been colonel of a regiment until incapacitated by wounds, and was wise in the ways of men. He taught Johnstone to think for himself. He also brought about his heart's desire. Two Secretaries of State were Mr Hewitt's particular friends. They obtained a lieutenant's commission for his nephew, and promised their powerful protection and support. Field-Marshal Keith said he would see to his interests. It was an opportunity in a thousand. But it was to be a lost opportunity. Mr Hewitt wrote pressing it on the father. A harsh letter threatening to disinherit his son if he persisted in opposing his wishes was the only response. Johnstone complied, and regretted it to the last day of his life.

Under the circumstances Russia became insupportable,

and Johnstone embarked for London, well knowing that by so doing he would estrange his father still further. He sailed as the guest of a Captain Walker, a worthy man who was a comparative stranger to him. Pending a reconciliation, Captain Walker put him up in his house, and for four or five months he received no money, nor were his letters answered. At the end of that period he was peremptorily ordered back to Edinburgh.

In 1745, on the news of Prince Charles Edward's landing in the Highlands being confirmed, Johnstone took the bit between his teeth, and set out for the north. There had been the usual clash of wills, and again Lady Jane Douglas sided with the son. His father wished him to delay until the Prince made good his footing in the capital. He joined Charles at Perth, one of the first of the few Lowland Scots who threw in their lot with him, having awaited the Prince's arrival at Duncrub, Lord Rollo's seat near Perth. His sister was married to a younger son of Lord Rollo, who succeeded to the title and estates in 1765. He was at once appointed aidede-camp to Lord George Murray, Lieut.-General of the Prince's army, and assistant aide-decamp to the Prince himself.

Johnstone was no longer a raw youth. He was twentysix, and had seen something of the world. His first impression was surprise at the smallness of the Prince's following, and he seems never to have

entertained any real hope of success for the enterprise. He was a Jacobite, and did not go back on it, as so many did. He followed the Prince's fortunes from Perth to Culloden, and afterwards in Paris. But he had a poor opinion of the Prince. As his assistant aidede-camp Johnstone saw him at close quarters, and he does not appear to have liked what he saw. The correctness of his judgment in general is not now called in question.

Without Lord George Murray the army would have been a rabble. His military genius carried them through so long as their luck held. It was luck that won for them the battle of Prestonpans. Sir John Cope's dispositions were not so ridiculous as is generally supposed. The more they examined his position, the more were they convinced that they could not attack without being cut to pieces. Their spirits were at a low ebb, when, in the evening, a local man, who knew the ground well, came to the Prince, and offered to show him a path through the marsh which protected the general's front. Lord George Murray seized the occasion. The Highlanders silently passed by it during the night, and the surprise was complete, just as later Wolfe scaled the heights of Abraham and surprised Montcalm at Quebec. Was the one indeed not an outcome of the other? We have never seen it suggested, but this seems almost certain. Wolfe was at his wits' end after having tried every

other expedient, and we know that he searched long and anxiously until he descried a path up the cliffs. Wolfe was not at Prestonpans, but he fought at Falkirk and Culloden, and so keen a military student was sure to know all that had taken place. It is significant that he knew what to look for, and it is impossible that so recent a parallel was not in his mind. Johnstone charged by the side of the Prince in the second line. So swift was the victory that, though they were only some fifty paces behind the first line, they saw no no enemy but the killed and wounded lying on the ground. At the end of the marsh there was a ditch three or four feet wide. In jumping this the Prince fell, and Johnstone caught him by the arm. "On examining his countenance,' he says, "it seemed to me, from the alarm expressed in it, that he considered this accident as a bad omen."

Charles gave him a captain's commission on the evening of the battle, without attaching him to any regiment, and he set about the raising of a company. He was successful, and the Duke of Perth put him in the artillery. Lord George Murray was piqued and unwilling to let him go, which speaks for his usefulness. There was more courage than capacity in that army. But he was worn out. Lord George did all the planning and directing, was untiring, slept little, and worked his aide-de-camp as he worked himself.

The march south was Charles' doing. The chiefs were against it, and Johnstone, on military grounds, thought it a blunder of the first magnitude. Не saw clearly that so small a force could not conquer England against the wishes of its inhabitants, and that it would be a diminishing force, as no accession to its strength would be available to make good the wastage of war. They knew before they crossed the border that the English were not with them. There would seem to have been much talk and shaking of heads among those, like Johnstone, whose business it was not to think; and with reason. The Lowland Scots looked on. They had not forgotten that under Charles II. and James II. they were, as Fletcher said, "hunted from hill to hill by an army composed for the most part of barbarous Highlanders." the English the Highlanders were savages, alien in race and language. Prince Charles might just as well have invaded England at the head of a band of Cherokee Indians. The terror of the English peasants, "the most stupid and credulous of mortals," was, as Johnstone says, "truly inconceivable." They believed the Highlanders ate children. Even those who knew better were very illdisposed towards them. Some were simply curious. The poet Gray wrote to Horace Walpole: "I heard three sensible middleaged men, when the Scotch were said to be at Stamford and actually were at Derby, talking

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