[Illustration: LIFE ON A TRANSPORT (i): KIT INSPECTION] [Illustration: LIFE ON A TRANSPORT (ii): RIFLE DRILL] Leaving the stage about noon, the _Carmania_ was immediately docked at Sandon, where after some further delay the third-class passengers were landed. Owing to the fact that the _Caronia_ was already in the _Carmania’s_ proper berth, being fitted out as an armed cruiser, and that both she and the _Aquitania_ were already well on the way to completion for their new task, the _Carmania_ could for the moment neither discharge her cargo nor bunker owing to the shortage of labour. As many painters, however, as could be assembled began at once to alter her hull and funnels, blackening out her well-known red and black tops, while a gang of shipwrights started to cut out the bulwarks fore and aft on the ‘B’ deck, in order to allow of the training to suitable angles of the guns that were to be placed in position there. Other Cunard stewards and joiners also concentrated at once upon the task of clearing out passenger accommodation from the vessel. During Saturday and Sunday the _Carmania_ remained in the basin, and it was on this day that her future midshipmen turned up, and had to be provided with accommodation in the midst of the existing confusion. On Monday she was able to get an empty berth, where she began at once to discharge her cargo, and to bunker at express speed. Armoured plates were now being put in position upon all her most vulnerable parts, and these were also being re-inforced with coal and bags of sand by way of extra protection. All the woodwork in the passengers’ quarters was being taken away; two of her holds were being fitted with platforms and magazines were being built on them; while means for flooding were also being installed, speaking-tubes fitted in the aft steering gear room, control telephones being run up, and her eight guns placed in position. These were all of 4.7 inch calibre and with a range of about 9,300 yards. In addition a 6 ft. Barr and Stroud range-finder was being fitted, together with two semaphores. Two searchlights were being mounted on slightly raised platforms on the bridge ends, while two ordinary lifeboats and eighteen Maclean collapsible boats were retained for war purposes. By Wednesday all the coal was in, all the bunkers being full, and the protection coal was in place. At 5 o’clock the next morning, the Naval ratings in charge of Lieutenant-Commander O’Neil, R.N.R., arrived from Portsmouth, most of them being R.N.R. men, but a good many belonging to the Royal Fleet Reserve, while the Marines on board were drawn in equal proportions from the Royal Marine Artillery, and the Royal Marine Light Infantry. The able seamen were for the most part Scotch fishermen of the finest type. [Illustration: THE “CARMANIA” READY FOR ACTION]