ous weapons, so it was necessary to pierce
ports in her sides, two forward and two aft, that they may be
discharged. The staff of the torpedo school brought with them twelve of
these novel fighting machines, at a cost of about L300 each, though L500
is the price paid to Whitehead's firm at Fiume; but as the English
Government has the authority, with certain limitations, themselves to
manufacture the torpedo, they cost England the former price.

After a short trial of the discharging gear outside the circular forts
we shook hands with the land of smoked haddock and sour bread, and
trimmed sails for the west, reaching the Sound by the following morning,
when coaling lighters attached themselves to us before you could say
Jack Robinson.

Work is again the order of the day; for coaling a large iron-clad over
all means some exertion I can assure you. It is most unpleasant work,
nevertheless it has to be done, so we set to work with a will. Dirty as
the ship was, and dirty as we all were, from the copious showers of
diamond dust falling everywhere, yet nothing could daunt our friends
from paying us the usual dinner-hour visit.

It was a curious spectacle to witness that farewell visit, to see coal
begrimed men coming up from below, reeking with sweat, to clasp the fair
hand of a mother, to snatch a kiss from the soft cheek of a sister or
sweetheart, or to feel the lingering embrace of a wife.

"Then the rough seamen's hands they wring;
And some, o'erpowered with bursting feeling,
Their arms around them wildly fling,
While tears down many a cheek are stealing."

CHAPTER II.

"Now we must leave our fatherland,
And wander far o'er ocean's foam."

GOOD BYE TO ALBION! SOUTHWARD HO!
GIBRALTAR.

Farewell, farewell! The last words have been said! How we would have put
off that last hour; how we would have blotted it out, if, by so doing,
we might have avoided that farewell. I never before realised how
impressive a sailor's parting is. Was it really but a few hours since
that loving, clinging hands rested within our own, that we heard the
scarcely breathed words which still linger in our ears? How like a dream
it all seems, and how like a dream it must continue to be, until we
shall once more hear those voices and feel those hands.

Thus felt we as on the morn of August, 4th, 1878, just one month from
the hoisting of the pennant, we rounded the western end of Plymouth
Breakwater,