The armour on the conning-tower is 10 inches thick, and weighs 65 tons, the weight of a Great Western express engine. It cost L7500--a sum equal to the lumped salaries for one year of all the Sea Lords of the Admiralty. The 10 inches of nickel steel of which it is made can stand a harder blow than the 17 inches of iron armour on the turrets of the old _Inflexible_. The conning-tower is the main 'fighting station' of the ship, the nerve-centre of the mighty organisation. Thence in action, from behind a ring-fence of solid metal, are controlled the huge engines, far down below, impelled by The strength of twice ten thousand horse That serve the one command, --if one may vary Mr. Kipling,--engines of the power of twenty-two thousand horses, the strength of an army corps of cavalry; also the steering of the ship and the firing of the guns. By means of a simple arrangement in the three primary colours--red, blue, and yellow--painted in bands round the walls of the conning-tower inside, the captain can tell at a glance, at any moment, which of his guns, and how many of them, can train on an enemy at any given point. The _Monmouth's_ 'fighting-weight' is another matter. Fourteen 6-inch guns, Vickers-Maxims of the latest pattern, contribute something to that. This is the sort of weapon the 6-inch gun is. Imagine one set up in Trafalgar Square to fire with extreme elevation. Its 100-pound shells would drop on Kingston Bridge in one direction; beyond Harrow, ten miles off, in another. Other shells would burst over Barnet; sweep the woodland rides of Epping Forest; startle the tennis-players on the trim lawns of Chislehurst in Kent. And not many seconds would elapse between the flash of the discharge and the shell doing its work. Ten miles, of course, is the farthest that the gun could shoot, its 'estimated extreme range.' In war-time that sort of firing would not be worth while, as it would be impossible to mark the shots. Seven miles, roughly, or 12,000 yards, is the limit the gun is sighted for. Then again, imagine our gun firing at a mark. At 2000 yards, the minimum engaging distance in naval war because of torpedoes, aiming from Trafalgar Square at a target set up, say, in Ludgate Circus or at Hyde Park Corner, the shot would smash through a slab of wrought iron 14 inches thick as easily as a stone goes through a pane of glass. Firing at 6000 yards, the maximum distance for opening action in ordinary circumstances, at a target set up at Hammersmith, for example, the shot would cut a hole clean through 6-1/2 inches of wrought iron--armour 2 inches thicker than our first ironclad, the _Warrior_, had on her sides. Fired with a full charge of 25 lbs. of cordite, the shot leaves the gun at a speed of 2775 feet (or half a mile and forty-five yards) a second--a pace capable of carrying it in a minute as far as Reading; with energy sufficient to toss Cleopatra's Needle 30 feet into the air