THE    SWEEP

with chips of wood. The boats brought off a number of soldiers. Many French and Belgians, most of them wounded, climbed aboard from small boats. There was no surgeon on board, but they were made as comfortable as possible.

By that time it was 7 p.m. Commander Watson decided to return to Dover. On the passage he fell in with the Gracie Fields, a new paddle-sweeper which had been hit in her engine-room. The Pangbourne took off most of her people, leaving a skeleton crew aboard, and began to tow her with the sweep-wire. Her rudder was jammed, so that she towed out on the starboard quarter, sinking slowly.

After an hour she had to be abandoned. The Pangbourne took off the skeleton crew, and since her compass had been kjiocked off the board by the bombing she steered by " lamp-post navigation "—from buoy to buoy—for darkness had fallen.

She approached Dover in the misty dawn, to be told that magnetic mines had been laid during the night in the harbour approaches. Her degaussing gear being wrecked, she had to steam in a circle until trawlers had swept the channel, but was able to disembark her troops later in the morning.

Meanwhile the paddle-sweepers were playing   their parts beside the " Smoky Joes."