Now comes the judgment! Our leader, of course, cannot signal back down her line, but the signal must be repeated from the leading ship of the line to starboard. Thus, you see, we read it diagonally. A dull glow breaks out at the mast-head of that transmitter of wiggings—and a wigging it is for somebody—a wigging in drunken winks—long and short ones—irresistibly comic if you don’t happen to be in the Service. Once again we are saved. The avenging electric spells out the name of our next ahead, a second-class cruiser—and then—‘_Why don't you keep station_?_’_ Let us thank God for second-class cruisers and all other lightning-conductors! The middle watch comes up; the Sub demands of the stars and the deep profound about him: ‘Who wouldn’t sell a farm and go to sea?’ descends the bridge in one light-hearted streak, and three minutes later is beautifully asleep, the ship’s kitten purring under his left ear. But the Captain was awake all the time. The change of speed roused him, and he lay watching the tell-tale compass overhead, his mouth at the bridge voice-tube; one eye cocked through the open port, and one leg over the edge of the bunk—in case. The Sub must learn his business by himself—must find confidence in isolation precisely as the Captain did a quarter of a century ago. It is not good for him to know that he is being watched. Next morning the Captain makes a casual allusion to ‘massed fleets in line of sixes and sevens.’ ‘It was our next ahead, sir,’ says the Sub deferentially. ‘Yes, it was the next ahead when I was a Sub,’ is the reply. ‘I know that next ahead.’ Then the wardroom, to whom the Sub has been confiding the success of his manœuvres, ask him whether he got to windward of the ‘owner’—much. HOW THE SUB GETS LEARNING And that is one of the ways in which youth gets learning. On a big battleship, they tell me, the Sub is little better than the Midshipmen he despises. He lives in the gun-room, he goes to school, he is sent on errands, and if he is good he is allowed to preserve discipline while a fraction of the decks are being washed. But on a third-class cruiser he is a watch-officer, an ornament of the ward-room, pitched into responsibility, and he enjoys himself, as I have tried to show. CHAPTER III