manner of varied experience behind them. When one comes to think, it s only just that a light 2o-knot cruiser should be handled, under guidance of an older head, by affable young gentlemen prepared, even sinfully delighted, to take chances not set down in books. She was new, they were new, the Admiral was new, and we were all off to the Manœuvres together thirty keels next day—threading their way in and out between a hundred and twenty moored vessels not so fortunate. We opened the ball, for the benefit of some foreign warships, with a piece of rather pretty steering. A consort was coming up a waterlane, between two lines of shipping, just behind us; and we nipped in immediately ahead of her, precisely as a hansom turning out of Bond Street nips in in front of a City 'bus. Distance on water is deceptive, and when I vowed that at one crisis I could have spat on the wicked ram of our next astern, pointed straight at our naked turning side, the ward-room laughed.
'Oh, that's nothing,' said a gentleman of twenty-two. ' Wait till we have to keep station to-night. It's my middle watch.'
'Close water-tight doors, then,' said a Sub-Lieutenant. 'I say' (this to the passenger) 'if you find a second-class cruiser's ram in the small of your back at midnight don't be alarmed.'
FASCINATING GAME OF GENERAL POST
We were then strung out in a six-mile line, thirty ships, all heading Westwards. As soon as we found room the Flagship began to signal, and there followed
