"And if they drown I do not care a fig. Arrest Mountbatten and the Man called Grigg!" For the moment these unhappy persons were roped and bound, while the Investiture went forward. Captain Dudley North was made a Knight Commander of the Aged Cod in these terms: "Dudley dear, I'm pleased to meet you Once again. Now let me treat you To the old established Order of the Very Ancient Cod. Its privilege is this, That you may daily kiss The most beauteous of my mermaids if you catch her on the nod." A move was finally made to the forecastle where was duly performed the physicking, shaving and ducking of the novices, beginning with the Prince and members of his staff and going down to the youngest seamen on the lower deck. The novices were marched up and seated, one after another, in the barber's chair, where a pill was squeezed into each one's mouth, despite the most lively struggles; the lather was laid on, a rough scrape with the wooden razor followed, the chair was upset and the now seasoned novice was sent head over heels into the swimming bath, where the Bears ducked him handsomely to the cheerful rhyme: "Shave him and bash him, Duck him and splash him, Torture and smash him, And don't let him go!" The Prince underwent a full share of the horse-play; and that he took a "three-times-three ducking" with the best, was the opinion of every one of the thirteen hundred sailor-men who looked on, and would have been candour itself if the ritual had been in any way reduced or evaded. It was a spectacle impossible to imagine anywhere but in the British Navy, and helped hilariously to relieve the monotony of the voyage. The cost of the material employed was probably less than a hundred shillings. The labour and artistry voluntarily bestowed by the ship's Company to make it what it was, cost nothing at all; the preparations, from the elaborate embroidering of Amphitrite's scales and the careful scenting of her golden hair, to the fine turning and engraving of the Insignia of the Equatorial Order of the Royal Bath, were all the work of off-duty hours when the sailor ordinarily would have been asleep. We are but children of a larger growth and happy are the traditions that keep us so in His Majesty's Navy. VII FIJI