The barge stops beside the Flag-ship, and the Admiral descends into it. What is the stamp, the peculiar stamp that these naval men bear?--as of a force trained and disciplined to its utmost capacity, and then held lightly in check--till wanted. You see it in so many of their faces, even in eyes hollow for want of sleep. It is always there--the same strength, the same self-control, the same humanity. Is it produced by the testing weight of responsibility, the silent sense of ever-present danger, both from the forces of nature and the enmity of man, the high, scientific training, and last but not least, that marvellous comradeship of the Navy, whether between officer and officer, or between officers and men, which is constantly present indeed in the Army, but is necessarily closer and more intimate here, in the confined world of the ship, where all live together day after day, and week after week, and where--if disaster comes--all may perish together? But on this bright winter morning, as we pass under and round the ships, and the Admiral points out what a landswoman can understand, in the equipment and the power of these famous monsters with their pointing guns, there was for the moment no thought of the perils of the Navy, but only of the glory of it. And afterwards in the Admiral's pleasant drawing-room on board the Flag-ship, with its gathering of naval officers, Admirals, Captains, Commanders, how good the talk was! Not a shade of boasting--no mere abuse of Germany--rather a quiet regret for the days when German and English naval men were friends throughout the harbours of the world. "Von Spee was a very good fellow--I knew him well--and his two sons who went down with him," says an Admiral gently. "I was at Kiel the month before the war. I _know_ that many of their men must loathe the work they are set to do." "The point is," says a younger man, broad--shouldered, with the strong face of a leader, "that they are always fouling the seas, and we are always cleaning them up. Let the neutrals understand that! It is not we who strew the open waters with mines for the slaughter of any passing ship, and then call it 'maintaining the freedom of the seas.' And as to their general strategy, their Higher Command--" he throws back his head with a quiet laugh--and I listen to a rapid sketch of what the Germans _might_ have done, have never done, and what it is now much too late to do, which I will not repeat.