s to our flag
alphabet. We cut out phrases like 'topgallant studding sail boom' and
'main spencer sheet blocks,' and introduced 'fiddley gratings' and
'foo-foo valve.' Even with all our trimming, the book was tiresome and
inadequate. We began to fumble with Morse and semaphore, with
flashlights and wig-wags and hand-flags.

We did it without a proper system. As a titbit to our other 'snippings,'
medicine, the Prayer Book, the law, ship's business, the breeches buoy,
ship-cookery! Fooling about with flags and tappers and that, was all
very well for the watch below, but there was _work_ to be done--the
binnacles to be polished, the sacred _suji-mudji_ to be slapped on and
washed off!

Hesitating and slipshod and inexact as we were, at least we made, of our
own volition, a start; a start that might, under proper and specialized
direction, have made an efficient and accurate addition to the sum of
our sea-lore. But we were wedded to titbits. Late on the tide, as
usual, the Board of Trade woke up to what was going on. They added a
'piece' to our lessons, without thought or worry as to the provision of
facilities for right instruction. We crammed hard for a few days, fired
our shot at the right moment, and forgot all about it.

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE-BOY REPAIRING FLAGS]

Withal, in our own amending way, we were enthusiastic. We learned the
trick of _Ak_ and _Beer_ and _Tok_ and _Pip_. We slapped messages at one
another (in the dog-watches), in many of which a guess was as good a
translation as any. Our efforts received tolerating and amused
recognition from naval officers (secure in possession of scores of
highly trained signal ratings). If we came, by chance, across an affable
British warship, she would perhaps masthead an E (exercise), to show
that there was no ill-feeling. Then was the time to turn out our star
man, usually the junior-est officer, and set him up to show that we were
not such duffers, after all! Alas! The handicaps that came against us!
The muddled backgrounds (camouflage, as ever was!), the fatal
backthought to a guess at the last word! The call and interfering
counter-call from reader to writer, and writer to reader, and, finally,
the sad admission--an inevitable _Eye_, _emmer_, _eye_ (I.M.I.--please
repeat), when our scrawl and jumble of conjectural letters would not
make sense! We have yet a mortifying memory of such an incident, in
which a distant signalman spelt out to us, clearly and distinct