igh_, _Montgomery_, _Cushing_, _Ericsson_, and _Stiletto_. A
triangular shape swings point up half-way between the Deck and the
signal-yard of the _New York_. It means half-cruising speed--five knots
an hour--and the other ships repeat the signal. Silently, majestically,
keeping their distances like soldiers on parade, the powerful steel
cruisers and the agile torpedo-boats move down the Conover Channel,
around the Southwest Spit, past the Hook bell-buoy, out the Gedney
Channel, and past the old red light-ship to the open sea. Another string
of signals rises on the flag-ship, and the answering pennants flutter on
the other ships while the signal-book says,

"Form double column."

[Illustration: "FORM DOUBLE COLUMN!"]

Every ship knows her place, and in a few minutes the right wing is made
of the _Minneapolis_, _Montgomery_, _Cushing_, and _Stiletto_, and the
left of the others, the flag-ship at the head and in the centre. The
speed is now up to the full cruising limit--ten knots an hour--and as
the ships go rolling and bowing over the Atlantic swells, their keen
prows send up fountains of silvery foam that spread away on either bow
in streamers of snow on the living blue. The flag-ship signals the
course, and again the others answer with the pennant of perpendicular
red and white stripes. The quiet of an orderly sea-march settles down
over the fleet, yet never for one instant, night or day, does vigilance
relax, for at any moment signals may break out on the flag-ship, though
they be nothing more than some vessel's number to warn her that she is
out of position.

But other signals do appear, for this is no holiday cruise, but one of
practice and ceaseless drill. Fleet tactics are executed almost without
rest. "Form line of battle, wings right and left front into line;" "By
vessels from the right front into echelon," "Front into line,"
"Squadrons right turn," "Form line, left wing left oblique," "Form
column, vessels right turn," and dozens of other orders are given by the
flag-ship, and executed with precision and accuracy which would amaze a
landsman, but which probably fall far short of the high ideal in the
Admiral's mind. Empty, paradelike manoeuvres these would seem to the
ignorant, but it was the skill of his captains in the execution of such
movements, combined with their knowledge of his plans, that enabled
Nelson to hurl his fleet upon that of Villeneuve at Trafalgar with such
fatal accuracy after hoisting