Apropos of signals—to go on where I left off—we were to have more than enough of them after target-practice. We finished first of all the cruisers, and went on to our rendezvous the Fastnet, but if we had listened to the passenger—he wanted to lower a boat and investigate the shattered rock—we should have been spared many sorrows. But we were zealous, Mr. Simple, and we went to the Fastnet; and it was hazy, and through the haze we heard a horrible elemental moaning that should have warned us. The battleships which we had not found at Bantry were scattered about those waters at their practice. Then I remembered that a twelve-inch gun discharges a projectile weighing some 800lb. and ranging about ten miles. And we went to the rendezvous encircled by these deep mutterings of invisible monsters, and behold! we came slap on the Flagship, who was running torpedoes. Any other of the big ones would not have mattered, but our luck sent us to the Flag. There was a feeling of calamity in the thick air, and I know one man who was not in the least relieved when she signalled: ‘Where are you bound?’ We replied we were waiting as ordered on that spot, for the rest of the cruisers, and remained in a deferential attitude, while the Flagship maintained her horrible composure. OUR FATAL MISTAKE Thinking no harm, we drifted some two miles to leeward, which was our fatal mistake, though we kept a skinned eye on her. Presently we saw a signal, but end on, as flags are apt to be when the signaller is dead up wind and the signallee down. We hung our answering pennant at the dip to show that we saw but could not understand, and scuttled up to the Flagship as fast as might be. The first part of the signal was an order to close, and the second expressed a desire to speak to us by semaphore. (Our signalmen’s faces were studies in gloom about this crisis; and the sad moaning of the guns went on afar.) We learned that the Flag had been trying to attract our attention for some time, and did not appreciate our _négligé déshabillé_, or words to that effect. There is no excuse in the Navy, and we took what was served out to us by the gibbering semaphore in silence, standing at attention. To tell the truth, we had been rather pleased with our target-practice, and this sudden dash of cold water chilled us. But there is a reason for all things. Now, we must signal the name of the officer of the watch (frantic searchings of heart among the officers) and the signalman (the signalmen had got beyond even despair), on duty on Friday morning last. What the nature of their crime was we knew not, and it was not ours to ask; but later we heard it had something to do with somebody else’s error. We gave that information (the Flag could have learned much more if she had asked for it) and I effaced myself with a great effacement forward, where the wits of the foc’sle were telling the signalman of Friday morning what sorts of death and disrating awaited him. ‘WE’VE LOST THE GAME’