In the navy the non-commissioned officers of the guard exercise no authority over the orderlies of the admiral and “skipper,” and there is no posting an orderly, as in the case of a sentry, there being a mutual compact that each relief report promptly on the hour. At night it is customary for each orderly to waken his own relief. As eight bells struck for the dog watch, I was in the bulkhead leading to the admiral’s cabin, testing my annunciator and receiving any verbal orders which might have been left by the flag-officer or officer of the deck. On this particular night Admiral Wilde, who “by the way” commanded the _Boston_ of Dewey’s fleet at the battle of Manila Bay, accompanied by Commander Staunton of the _Rainbow_, had left the ship to attend a dinner party on board the British commerce destroyer _Terrible_. The old man being away, I spent my watch in leisure, as an admiral’s orderly takes orders from no one but the admiral. After sampling a few of his mild Manila cigars and running off a few letters on the typewriter, I climbed aloft to the quarter-deck, where the capstan and brass tompions of the big aft eight-inch guns shone bright in the moonlight. What a night this was! Never on such a night could Dewey’s fleet have passed unseen the forts of Corregidor. There, stretching over the mountain-side of Victoria, lay the illuminated City of Hong Kong; the wavelets of the Pearl River, with its myriads of junks and sampans, seemed to dance in the moonlight; off at the entrance, from the tower of a light-house, a powerful revolving search-light cast its rays beyond the horizon of the China Sea. Here and there dotting the harbor were the “dogs of war” of the American, British, German, and French navies; large junks with colored Chinese lanterns at the bow, which trembled in the soft breeze, and an eye on either side, to guide it on its way, passed to and fro, like phantoms of the mist. All was silent about the deck. The tramp, tramp, tramp of the big East Indian Sikh who patrolled the water front was the only sound to disturb the tranquillity of this dream-like night. As I leaned on the taffrail of the quarter-deck, in deep meditation, I thought of what a prodigious subject this scene would make for the pen of a Byron or a Browning, and that it was on such a night in Venice that Desdemona eloped with her tawny Moorish warrior.