‘We told ’em about our anchors in the Dockyard,’ said the bridge. ‘We told ’em so distinctly, and they said: “We’re very much obliged to you for the information, and we’ll make the changes you recommend—in the next boat of your class.” That’s what I call generosity.’ ‘Does that ship always behave like that?’ I asked. From all three funnels of a high, stubby cruiser the smoke of a London factory insulted the clean air. ‘Oh, no; she’s only burning muckings like the rest of us. She’s our “chummy” ship. She’s a new type—she and the _Furious_. Fleet rams they call ’em. Rather like porcupines, aren’t they?’ The two had an air of bristling, hog-backed ferocity, strangely out of keeping with the normal reserve of a man-of-war. The _Blake_, long and low, looked meek and polite beside them, but I was assured that she could blow them out of the water. Their own Captains, of course, thought otherwise. ASHORE IN IRELAND All Ireland was new to me, and I went ashore to investigate Castletown’s street of white houses, to smell peat smoke and find Dan Murphy, owner of a jaunting car and ancient friend of the ward-room. In this quest me and the Navigator mustered not less than half the male population of Cork County, the remainder being O’Sullivan’s; but we found Dan at last—old, grizzled, with an untameable eye, voluble and beautifully Celtic. ‘Will I meet ye to-morrow at Mill Cove at nine-thirty? I will. Here’s my hand an’ word on it. Will I dhrive ye to Glenbeg for the fishing? I will. There’s my hand an’ word on it. Do I mean it? Don’t I know the whole livin’ fleet, man an’ boy, for years?’ He appeared at the appointed hour with a raw-boned horse and wonderful yarns of trout taken by ‘the other gentlemen’ in Glenbeg, the lough of our desire, fourteen miles across the hills. It was a cloudless day with a high wind—bad for trout but good for the mere joy of life; and the united ages of my companions reached forty-five. We were quite respectable till we cleared Castletown, and such liberty-men as might have been corrupted by our example. Then we sang and hung on to the car at impossible angles, and swore eternal fidelity to the bare-footed damosels on the road, they being no wise backward to return our vows; and behaved ourselves much as all junior officers do when they escape on holiday. It was a land of blue and grey mountains, of raw green fields, stone-fenced, ribbed with black lines of peat, and studded with clumps of gorse and heather and the porter-coloured pools of bog water. Great island-dotted bays ran very far inland, and bounding all to Westward hung the unswerving line of Atlantic. Such a country it was as, without much imagination, one could perceive its children in exile would sicken for—a land of small holdings and pleasant green ways where nobody did more work than was urgent. ROARING DAY OF SUN AND WIND