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Show sum em GCTH TILLS Monotony of Winter Nights Actively Relieved by Imminence Im-minence of Quick Death. Special Cable to The Tribune. LONDON. Dec. In these winter nights. the Railors of the British navy are having no easy time while guarding the coasts of Germany. A midshipman writes the following story of a collision and a second smash narrowly escaped In, a letter let-ter to his mother: , I am writing this letter In my niht control position by the light of the breaking dawn. I write most of my letters in the place a sea. as they serve to pass th.e time and keep one awake. I have been up here since 3:45 this morning. It has been a lovely night, but nothing has happened, and it Is the same night after night. A few nights ago, however, we had a very narrow escape from disaster. It was about 3 o'clock In the morning, and a thick fog prevailed. Suddenly a dark mass appeared on the bow and bore down upon us. For a few seo-onds seo-onds I and the other control officers thought she was a German, and we prepared to open fire. Luckily at that Instant the fos lifted slighUy and showed us one of our own ships, bavins bav-ins apparently lost her position In the fog. Collision seemed Inevitable, and we prasped rails and stanchions and waited for the crush. Our helm was put "hard over" and she did the same; by a miracle wo cleared each other. In, fact, w passed so close you could have stepped from ship to ship! Owing; to our high speeds we should undoubtedly have sunk If a collision had taken place, as the blow would have been a glancing one and ripped our side out. The headlines in the papers would not have looked well, would they? About three weeks ago we had a similar nffair. but with a cargo I steamer carrying livestock from Scot- land to Norway. In this case collision col-lision actually took place. She was about 6000 tons and struck us bows on, the port side, amidships. Her masts came down w-lih a run, her bows crumpled up like paper against our nrmo'Td sides, letting go the anchors and cables, the noise of which was terrihe. She then fell away from us and signaled that she was slnk-1 slnk-1 Ing. We lowered a boat, and, as of-1 of-1 beer of the watch, I went away in j charge. U was n-ery rough at the ! time and we had the greatest difficulty difficul-ty in making any headway at all against the heavy peas, and narrow- ly escaped being swamped. I found 1 it impossible to get alongside her and j was ufra id she might no down suddenly sud-denly and engulf us. Eventually we I managed to establish a tow between her and tho next battleship astern of us. She wns towed into , and as far as I know was safely beached. Apparently no lives were lost. The j dumugs done to us whs not very serious. seri-ous. One of our plates was stove In and the chaplain's cabin was demolished. demol-ished. So far we have ordy been attacked by submarines and flouting mines. A fpydays ago a torrno fired from a Fubmarine passed just ahead of us withou; doing nny damage. I am I afraid before lon one of us will siif- I fer. Our luck has been perfectly extraordinary ex-traordinary of late. We ought to ! have hren sunk twice in the last three weeks! As tho arm Irs on land do not appear to bo coirg very well, we think H unlikely that the main Ger- 1 nmn fleet will come out until tha I Baltic begins to freeae. |