te Ensign aloft and a naked grey gun on their high
bows. They are late in their return, and one can guess at deadly iron
spheres stirred from the depths of the fairways, thrown buoyant in the
wash astern, and destroyed by crack of gunfire. The commodore of the
sisterly pairs, a young lieutenant of Reserve, waves a cheery greeting
as we pass.

[Illustration: DAWN: CONVOY PREPARING TO PUT TO SEA]

And now the Roads, windless and misty, the anchored merchantmen swung at
different angles, in their gay fantasy of dazzle-paint, borrowing
further motley from the mist, and leering grotesquely through the thin
vapours. But for her lines, undeniably fine and graceful, _War Trident_
is the standardest of standards. Dazzle-painters have slapped their
spite at her in lurid swathes and, not content, have draped her sheer in
harlequin crenellations. Her low pipe-funnel upstands in rigid
perpendicular. ("Chief! Pit yer haun' up an' feel if th' kettle's
bilin'!") No masts break the long length of her, saving only a midship
signal-pole that serves her wireless aerials and affords a hod-like
perch for the look-out aloft. She is stark new, smooth of plating, and
showing even the hammer-strokes on her rivets. Through the thin paint on
her sides, marks and symbols of construction appear, the letters of her
strakes painted in firm white, with here and there an unofficial
shipyard embellishment--"Good old Jeemy Quin," or "Tae hell wi' the
Kiser!" She is ready for sea, and life-boats and davits, swung outboard,
tower overhead as the picket-launch draws up at her gaunt side. She is
in ballast trim, and it is evident that her standard carpenters hold
strictly to a rule that ignores a varying freeboard--the side ladder is
short by eight feet, and only by middling the rungs (a leap at the
bottom, a long swaying climb, and a drag at the top) are we able to
clamber on board.

A special 'drill' for conducting affairs with masters of brand-new ships
should be devised immediately by Admiralty, and the mildest of
Low-Church curates (trimmed by previous dire tortures to the utter limit
of exasperation) be provided, on whom officials may be well practised.
Usually the master has been hurried out of port by the last rivet driven
home, with strange officers and the very weakest of new crews, in a ship
jam-full of the newest 'gadjets,' and the least possible reserve of gear
to work them. Quickly and bitterly the fourth sentence of Confession at
Morning Pra