l to this effect
as the destroyer secured to the tank steamer to replenish her supply of
oil-fuel.

The lost sheep had returned to its fold.

A NAVAL MENAGERIE

Denis was a pig, a very special sort of pig, a pig of German origin,
and perhaps the only animal of his species in whose favour a special
dispensation was made by the Board of Agriculture. He originally
belonged to the German light cruiser _Dresden_, and, after the
destruction of that vessel at Juan Fernandez by the _Kent_, _Glasgow_,
and _Orama_, was seen swimming about in the water close to the
_Glasgow_. A blue-jacket promptly jumped overboard and rescued him
from a watery grave, and Denis, instead of being converted into pork or
sausages, became a prisoner of war and a pet. He did not seem the
least dismayed by his change of nationality, and, being an adaptable
creature of robust constitution, throve on a miscellaneous and
indiscriminate diet of ships' provisions, eked out by tobacco,
cigarette ends, and coal. Moreover, within a month, so history
relates, he was quite accustomed to sleeping in a hammock, where he
snored exactly like a human being.

But the regulations as to the importation of animals into Great Britain
are necessarily stringent, and on the _Glasgow's_ arrival in home
waters there were complications as to the disposal of Denis. He could
not be landed in the ordinary way, but eventually, after some
correspondence, the Board of Agriculture solved the momentous question
by giving special permission for him to be put ashore at Whale Island,
the naval gunnery school in Portsmouth harbour. There, so far as I
know, he still remains as a naturalised Briton.

But a pig is by no means the strangest animal which has made its home
on board a man-of-war. In a small gunboat in China some years ago the
ship's company acquired a so-called tame alligator. Algernon, as they
christened him, came on board as a youngster a few weeks old and about
four feet long, and soon developed a habit of appearing when the decks
were being scrubbed in the mornings, when he revelled in having the
hose played upon him and in having his scaly back well scrubbed with a
hard broom. He devoured a tame rabbit and two cats, but the crux came
when he taught himself a trick of waiting until some unsuspecting
person had his back turned, of making a sudden rush at his victim and
capsizing him with a well-placed whisk of his horny tail, and then
running in with a goo