A battle-cruiser has many aspects. It is a fortress with parade grounds and cricket pitches, a monastery with divagations in port, a school of many things besides arithmetic, and a community that could teach social law to Mr. Hyndman. It is above all from this point of view the home, the castle and the club of the officers and men who inhabit it, and the centre of these significances is the ward-room. The _Renown's_ had an ante-room which enshrined the files, not greatly disturbed, of a few newspapers, and was a most comfortable smoking-room, but it was about the tables and chairs, the Mess President's mallet and the unwearied piano of the ward-room itself that the hoariest traditions of His Majesty's Navy most conspicuously flourished and the atmospheric essence of the Senior Service most happily clung. There is a variety of the game of Patience played with cards called "Knock." It was plainly invented, in a moment of drowsy leave, by a sub-lieutenant to whom had arrived the felicity of ordering, by a stroke upon the table, Commander X or Lieutenant-Commander Y to "pass the wine" in penalty for having read an urgent signal from the bridge and omitted to excuse himself to him, the said Sub-Lieutenant, and Mess President for the week, though youngest officer present. Various were the offences thus visited across the field of the repast, which had a goal at each end, kept, so to speak, by the Chaplain, with his grace before and after meat. In that consecrated interval no lady's name may be pronounced, and nothing of any sort may be perused. The Spell with which the ward-room guards its daily history at once paralyses the pen. There is really no way of learning much about these things except by entering the Navy or persuading a battle-cruiser to give you a berth in her, opportunities which occur but seldom to any of us. The relaxations of that genial and athletic place form a tempting theme, but it is better for the publishers that a modest number of these volumes should reach the libraries than that a whole edition should be sunk at sea. All this announced and admitted however, this was the voyage to Australasia of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and the _Renown_, at least in the public eye, must be subordinated to her duty.