Accommodation on salvage work is never luxurious. Men sleep and eat where and when they can. But though she may be carrying three or four times her proper complement, there is usually a salvage steamer aboard which the men live.

Our only salvage steamer was a tug-the Aleida Johanna -which, after protracted and irritating negotiations by interpreter with the engineer of the port at Archangel and by telegram with his opposite number at Murmansk, we had succeeded in chartering. She, however, was still at Murmansk, and at the best there was not room for more than a dozen men aboard of her.

All hands had therefore to live on board the wreck, which, having been thoroughly looted and deserted for over two years, did not at first sight look very habitable. But no Russian, given an axe and sufficient timber, would be homeless for more than a day; and on the morning after our arrival the ship was comfortable enough, the saleon and cabins cleaned out for us, and the poop and forecastle fitted for the men with new doors and double tiers of bunks, which bore an extraordinary family resemblance to those in a German dug-out. Indeed, many of the men, nearly all of whom were from the Baltic, were German in speech and appearance. The majority of them by birth were Letts

good workmen, clean, and studiously polite, with a deference to their employers which, whether it is to be regretted or not, has died out entirely in England. But though capable and industrious, they were of a shifty and violent temper.

"Rovy," Captain G. (himself a Lett) would say in his broken English, "rovy, like a dog. A word, and the son kills the father and the father the son. You must keep him in the hand-so-strong-strong. So I keep him all my life." He was to find that the men were now not so easily to be kept "in the hand." Even "the black labour," as he called it, the carpenters and unskilled labourers from Archangel and Soroka itself, were alive to the political changes of the past year or so, and listened the more readily to the one or two agitators on board, and were the more dangerous from their childlike simplicity and entire lack of education.

The first evening they filled the entrance to the saloon to listen to the arrangements with regard to hours and details of work, a proceeding which, though they were respectful enough, aroused Captain G.'s indignation.

"Never have I seen this thing," he exclaimed. "I have him always like a dog treated before in my life." He was the kindest old man, and there is no doubt had considered his men and looked after them well, but he was no believer

Our first business, after the men had settled themselves abeard, was to send off the erew for the Aleida Johanna by train to Murmansk, and the next to get steam on the wreck. Steam, the life-blood of a ship, to work the winches so that we could lower pumps and gear down into the 'tweendecks, and later to work the pumps themselves.

We had failed to get a donkey-boiler in Archangel, and the ship's donkey-boiler was at the same level as the main boilers, and therefore under water and useless.

I embarked on what I felt to be a fruitless search for a donkey-boiler in Soroka without any great confidence. The railway station and Belaieff's mill were drawn blank, but luck was with us (as on several occasions afterwards), and I found at Stewart's, the mill on the east side of the bay just opposite the wreck, a new boiler which had been intended for a small tug-boat but never fitted.

It was some hundreds of yards from the beach, in a wooden house which had been built round it; it weighed two tons, and the local manager of the mill was very doubtful as to whether we could be allowed to have it, even at the inordinate price he put upon it. However, it was a very short time before the house was to pieces, the boiler hoisted on to a barge, towed off to the ship, and got aboard, and the engineers were busy

A certain amount of technioality is unavoidable if one is to follow the story of the next two months, and it is perhaps as well at this point to explain the plan of salvage which the diver's examination and our previous inspection led us to adopt.

The soundings round the ship gave at high-water springtides 10 feet forward, 12 feet amidships, and 14 feet aft on the starboard side, which was the side furthest up on the ledge of rock. On the port side there was a foot more forward, 18 inches more amidships, and a couple of feet more aft.

The builders had telegraphed to us that for the vessel to float empty, and with no bunkers, but with ballast tanks full, she would require 7 feet 6 inches forward, 9 feet 6 inches amidships, and 12 feet 6 inches aft. We had not much to spare, therefore, and there was question of leaving the most severely damaged compartment alone. The vessel must be got into such a condition that all compartments could be pumped practically dry.

no

The fact that the water only rose and fell a few inches with the tide in the two after-holds (Nos. 3 and 4) showed that these were only slightly damaged. Actually we discovered the principal source of the leakage in No. 4-a rivet out in the side of the tunnel-the first day.

These two holds were therefore left alone until the time

In the engine-room the diver found that three manhole doors were off and had disappeared. Here, doubtless, was the origin of the story of the rook through the bottom of the engine-room, no doubt circulated by the same individual who had removed the doors, and had wished in this way to deter any one else from attempting salvage.

guess at, for it was impossible for the diver to get underneath the vessel, sitting flat down on the rock as she was, but we knew that there could be very little of it intact.

The scheme proposed was to build a cement bulkhead, six feet broad by six feet high, inside a wooden box right across the whole width of the ship (42 feet) in the stokehold against the bulkhead between

There was no double bottom in the stokehold, and it was here that we anticipated serious trouble. Fortunately, the divers could find none underneath the boilers; but the bulkhead between the stokehold and No. 2 hold had given way at the bottom, and it was evident that at this point (where the ship was apparently resting on a small ledge of rook slightly above the level of the rest) there was oonsiderable damage.

In No. 2 hold there were a large number of rivets out in the tank top, which was badly set up, the seams

the

tank were leaking, and in one place the bottom of the bulk head between No. 2 and No. 1 holds had given way. In No. 1 hold, as in No. 2, there were numbers of rivets gone, and the seams of the tanks were opened out.

It must be understood that there was never any question of making the ship's bottom water-tight. If she were to float at all she must float on her tank tops. The condition

similar bulkhead in No. 2 hold against the other side of the original bulkhead.

These two cement bulkheads would, in fact, constitute at once a new water-tight bulkhead between the stockhold and No. 2 hold, and a patch over the damage to the bottom at this point.

A third cement bulkhead was to be built against the damaged portion of the bulkhead between No. 2 and No. 1 holds.

It was necessary to make these bulkheads six feet high, though it was only the bottom of the ship's bulkhead which was damaged, in order to have sufficient weight of cement on top of the damage to resist the pressure of the water, which would try to force its way in when the ship was pumped out.

It will be appreciated that these bulkheads had to be built by the divers under water.

The method was as follows: The wooden box, or rather wall, was constructed by the carpenters on deck in sections made to fit exactly into each other. It was made of 4-inch

deals, which were fitted as closely as possible and caulked, to make them water-tight. The bottom (where it rested on the tank top) was fitted with a big "pudding" or sausage of canvas filled with hemp for the same purpose.

These sections were weighted and sent down to the diver, who placed them in position six feet away from the ship's bulkhead, until there was a wooden wall right across the vessel.

He then went down and proceeded to fill the space between this wall and the ship's bulkhead with cement. This was mixed dry in the 'tween - decks with sand and stones, and sent down to him, on the endless chain principle, in iron canisters with a canvas bottom fastened with a slipknot.

He would open the bottom of the canister as close to the ground as possible and spread the cement with his foot as it fell out, when it would, of course, mix with the water.

Fortunately for us, there was a quantity of cement at Murmansk, and more fortunately still, there was a vessel due shortly to leave for Kem, only four hours' distance by sea from Soroka. A hurried cable to the D.N.T.O. produced a promise to ship 300 barrels (at £2, 12s. 6d. a barrel) within a few days.

Meanwhile there was plenty to do in constructing the wooden bulkheads, in cleaning away the debris from the engine-room and stokehold, in strengthening the ship's der

rioks and rigging new running gear, in bringing aboard and cutting to size heavy 16-inch logs from Stewart's mill with which to shore down the tanktops to stand the pressure when the ship should be pumped out; in connecting up steam pipes all over the vessel and persuading the rusted winches to work again, in taking accurate soundings in the direction in which the ship should be taken out when she floated, in strengthening the poop and the after-hatch coamings with timber, cutting a hole in the poop and fitting a fairlead (without pneumatic tools) so that the ship could be heaved off to an anchor laid out on the port quarter, in lowering pumps down into the holds and connecting up suctions, and in half a hundred other directions.

The only pumps we had been able to procure were two Worthington pattern steampumps each with two 6-inch suotions, a 4-inch steam Worthington and a 2-inch.

Captain G. was very eonfident that these were all we should need, and that the cement bulkheads would be so water-tight that the ship could be pumped absolutely dry. Fortunately I (by this time regretting-too latemy ship with all her gear in England) believed in taking no chances, and sent a wire asking that a 12-inch Allen motor-pump (capacity 750 tons per hour) should be sent out with a good motor engineer from England to Archangel by the next ship

But how dependent we were to be on that motor-pump, and how good the motor engineer was to prove himself, I never dreamed at the time.

Throughout July the work went well. The Aleida Johanna left Murmansk, thanks to Captain Captain Beck, D.N.T.O., after a last attempt on the part of the Russian authorities to stop her and cancel the charter, and duly arrived at Soroka. The cement arrived at Kem and was brought round in barges. Thenceforward the divers lived below in water water the colour of milk, and the 'tweendecks were thick with cement dust that filled the hair and the eyebrows and the lungs of the men who mixed it. Five hours on end the divers would remain below, and then would come up and turn the pump for five hours for their relief, -a spectacle that would have sent the Secretary of the National Divers' Union of Great Britain into a rapid decline. For in this country the diver is a great man and will not even carry his own helmet. The deck was knee-deep in shavings from the fresh-out wood, and the continual clangings and hammerings from the engine - room told of activity there.

The hands turned to at 7 A.M. and worked to 7 P.M., with an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.

The skies were blue and cloudless, the sun shone continually with just sufficient warmth to be pleasant; the

clear that looking over the side one could see on the bottom every rock, and every tin that had been thrown overboard.

The launch-Permoshnik, or Assistance-puffed in every morning the five miles to Soroka for stores, in charge of one "Rat-Whiskers," an old man in whose veins was salt water instead of blood, who would live at sea until his soul passed into a gull, and whose irritating habit it was, when he went in alone with the launch, to tie up for as long as possible alongside the pier and sleep, when the launch was most needed at the wreck.

Rations we got on repayment from the local British A.S.C. officer, who had been called upon to feed so many strange people that he had lost the faculty of surprise. His flook included the British troops in the district, the Serbians, all the native population, the workers on the railway, a few casual Americans, French, and Italians, Bolshevik prisoners, and several hundred sleigh-dogs left over from the winter (who, however, fed largely on each other). All these had different seales of rations, and when they paid, paid different prices in different currencies. "Salvage," therefore, was only a matter of another daily indent, and "Rat - Whiskers" and the A.S.C. sergeant were soon on the best of terms,-particularly as our rations were "full-scale," and included both rum and cigarettes.

The men would come in