Imagine a quarter-deck seventy-five feet wide and a hundred and twenty long, awninged over, decked with flags and a triple row of white and purple electrics, the massed bands of the Fleet at the far end, and all the rest, from the stern to the snowy barbette, a whirl of uniforms of all ranks: Captains with and without aiguillettes; Commanders, Officers of Marines, in their blue-faced mess-jackets, with the laurelled globe on the lapel, Engineers, Paymasters, Clerks, and the others—a shifting carpet of blue and gold and red and black. The muzzles of the forty-six ton guns sheered up above us, and high over all, on the top of the barbette, which was disguised with flags and carpets, sat the Admiral. It was an amazing spectacle—the Fleet at play, and for some reason, it made me choke. One recovered here men last met at the other end of the world—at Gaspé, Bermuda, Vancouver, Yokohama, Invercargill, or Bombay—rovers and rangers in Her Majesty’s men-of-war. Then we danced; for this also is the custom of the Navy, that when a man has been working like several niggers all day he should, on chance given, dance. And that is why the Naval man dances so well. He begins, as I have seen, on the _Britannia_, whose decks are fairly open. Then he dances on such occasions as these, in and out among all the fittings of a battleship’s deck. ‘Makes us awfully handy with our feet,’ said Twenty-One, mopping himself in the pauses of a waltz. ‘Won’t you take a turn? No end good exercise.’ ‘No, I’m afraid of the ladies,’ I replied. ‘They _are_ rather solid,’ said Twenty-One reflectively, as a Post-Captain reversed on to his toes. ‘My partner doesn’t protect me as a gentleman should. He threw me at a Paymaster just now.’ How in the course of their work they had saved up enough energy for this diversion was beyond me. They danced, fair heel and toe, unsparingly a couple of hours, for the sheer, downright exercise of it. And they were by no means all youths in the game either. We dropped panting into the boats, and saw behind us the whole gay show fade, flicker, and twinkle out. The Flagship had returned to her ordinary business. To-morrow she would take us back to Portland on our speed trials. * * * * * * * NO. 2 WELSH COAL ‘Isn’t it scandalous? Isn’t it perfectly damnable?’ said an officer after we had got under way, pointing to the foul, greasy columns of smoke that poured from every funnel. ‘Her Majesty’s Channel Squadron, if you please, under steam, burning horse-dung.’