off Gallipoli when the Turks were sending shells like rain. This
midshipman ordered his men to take cover. His men included bearded
fellows twice his size and age. They obeyed, as they always obey. Then
the youthful fearnought, to show his contempt for danger, stood on one
of the cutter's cross-seats, pulled out a cigarette-case almost as large
as himself, and puffed rings of smoke skywards.

"I made a jolly fine set of rings that time," he told one of the men.

Another of this tribe was in Cairo on leave when he received word that
his ship was to leave sooner than expected. She was in Alexandria. Not
having sufficient money to pay his train fare, he requisitioned a
motor-bicycle and sped on to Alexandria. From his youthful eyes there
welled tears when he was informed that his ship was weighing anchor.
Nothing daunted, however, he commandeered a fast motor-boat, and swept
out after the warship, which he caught on the go. This is the man who in
later years you are apt to meet at the officers' messes--a man full of
information and wonderfully versatile. He may have ploughed the seas for
many years, and dwelt in his steel home in the baking heat of tropical
suns, and waited for the enemy for many a day. Hence conversation never
lags at these dinners. The meals are comparatively plain in these days;
but most of the officers stick to the delight of a cocktail before
dinner, and after the _piece de resistance_ they have their glass of
port.

Just before the dessert the port is poured into glistening glasses, and
the table is cleared.

"Table cleared, sir," announces the steward to the president of the
mess; and a second later one hears: "Wine passed, sir."

"Thank God," is the brief grace of the chaplain; or, if one is not
present, the head of the mess says it. This is followed with a rap on
the table, and from the president of the mess:--

"Mr. Vice, 'The King.'"

"Gentlemen, 'The King,'" speaks out the vice-president of the mess, who
is seated at the other end of the table opposite to the head of the
mess.

Conversation, which a second before had been filling the place, is
silenced by the grace, and the stranger may be somewhat startled by the
suddenness of the proceedings. It is the privilege of these officers to
drink the King's health seated. This is an old custom, which came about
through the sovereign realising that ships are not the steadiest places
always, and the fact that the ward-rooms are sometimes not