little?"

"Well, she does a bit," he admitted, "but not so much--Starboard!"
said he, over his shoulder, to the bearded mariner at the wheel.
"Take us round by the _Tiger_."

"Aye, aye, sir!" retorted the bearded one as we began to slide
through the water.

"Yes, she's apt to roll a bit, perhaps, but she's not so bad," he
continued; "besides, you get used to it."

Here he fell to scanning the haze ahead through a pair of binoculars,
a haze through which, as we gathered speed, ghostly shapes began to
loom, portentous shapes that grew and grew upon the sight, turret,
superstructure and embattled mast; here a mighty battle cruiser,
yonder a super-destroyer, one after another, quiet-seeming on this
autumn morning, and yet whose grim hulks held latent potentialities
of destruction and death, as many of them have proved but lately.

As we passed those silent, monstrous shapes, the Commander named them
in turn, names which had been flashed round the earth not so long
ago, names which shall yet figure in the histories to come with
Grenville's _Revenge_, Drake's _Golden Hind_, Blake's _Triumph_,
Anson's _Centurion_, Nelson's _Victory_ and a score of other
deathless names--glorious names that make one proud to be of the
race that manned and fought them.

Peacefully they rode at their moorings, the water lapping gently at
their steel sides, but, as we steamed past, on more than one of them,
and especially the grim _Tiger_, I saw the marks of the Jutland
battle in dinted plate, scarred funnel and superstructure, taken when
for hours on end the dauntless six withstood the might of the German
fleet.

So, as we advanced past these battle-scarred ships, I felt a sense of
awe, that indefinable uplift of soul one is conscious of when
treading with soft and reverent foot the dim aisles of some cathedral
hallowed by time and the dust of our noble dead.

"This afternoon," said the Commander, offering me his cigarette case,
"they're going to show you over the _Warspite_--the German Navy have
sunk her so repeatedly, you know. There," he continued, nodding
towards a fleet of squat-looking vessels with stumpy masts, "those
are the auxiliaries--coal and oil and that sort of thing--ugly
beggars, but useful. How about a whisky and soda?"

Following him down the perpendicular ladder, he brought me aft to a
hole in the deck, a small hole, a round hole into which he proceeded
to insert himself, first his long legs, then his broad shoulde