Many men will tell you that our ships are under-gunned. So they are—on paper: but on paper a gun merely represents a tube sticking out of the side. One does not see the little group of from three to nine men who work it in action; the ammunition hoist that feeds it; or the pile of live shell and cartridge that would lie beside it. These things take up space, and the more space you supply, the less will the gun be disconcerted by its own or a neighbour’s disaster. Our people do not like to work in crowds. They prefer, as we do ashore, to manage their own little shows alone. The effect of wounded men kicking and hiccoughing in a crowded secondary battery is bad for cool aiming; besides which, idlers, cooks and servants might be jostling the workers in their efforts to get the wounded below. On an open deck, with fair intervals between the guns, the wounded can be moved out of the way at once; and if the gun itself, by any chance, be dismounted, there is a margin of safety for its inboard collapse, and room for a working-party to take charge of it. I am speaking now of light armaments behind shields. The knowledge that one lucky shot might wreck two or three guns together does not make for happiness. This is why our guns are comparatively few in number, but exceedingly handy to work. A ship knows, of course, exactly where the crowd would of necessity be gathered in any craft opposed to her. Two or three shots in a nest of crowded guns, open ammunition-hoists, and piles of ‘ready’ cartridges, will do more moral and intellectual damage than the effacement of one or two guns in a line strung evenly from bow to stern. NOTE IV OMDURMAN