Few, including the enemy, were greatly deceived. At that point where alterations of apparent course were important--to put the putting Fritz off his stroke--the deck-houses and erections with their beamwise fronts or ends would be plainly noted, and a true line of course be readily deduced. With all our new zeal, we stopped short of altering standing structures, but we could paint, and we made efforts to shield our weakness by varied applications. Our device was old enough, a return to the chequer of ancient sea-forts and the line of painted gun-ports with which we used to decorate our clipper sailing ships. (That also was a camouflage of its day--an effort to overawe Chinese and Malay pirates by the painted resemblance to the gun-deck of a frigate.) We saw the eye-disturbing value of a bold criss-cross, and those of us who had paint to spare made a 'Hobson-jobson' of awning spars and transverse bulkheads. These were our sea-efforts--rude trials effected with great difficulty in the stress of the new sea-warfare. We could only see ourselves from a surface point of view, and, in our empirics, we had no official assistance. During our brief stay in port it was impossible to procure day-labouring gangs--even the 'gulls' of the dockside were busy at sea. On a voyage, gun crews and extra look-outs left few hands of the watch available for experiments; in any case, our rationed paint covered little more than would keep the rust in check. We were relieved when new stars of marine coloration arose, competent shore concerns that, on Government instruction, arrayed us in a novel war paint. Our rough and amateurish tricks gave way to the ordered schemes of the dockyard; our ships were armed for us in a protective coat of many colours. Upon us like an avalanche came this real camouflage. Somewhere behind it all a genius of pantomimic transformation blazed his rainbow wand and fixed us. As we came in from sea, dazzle-painters swarmed on us, bespattered creatures with no bowels of compassion, who painted over our cherished glass and teakwood and brass port-rims--the last lingering evidences of our gentility. Hourly we watched our trim ships take on the hues of a swingman's roundabouts. We learned of fancy colours known only in high art--alizarin and grey-pink, purple-lake and Hooker's green. The designs of our mantling held us in a maze of expectation. Bends and ecartelés, indents and rayons, gyrony and counter-flory, appeared on our topsides; curves and arrow-heads were figured on boats and davits and deck fittings; apparently senseless dabs and patches were measured and imprinted on funnel curve and rounding of the ventilators; inboard and outboard we were streaked and crossed and curved.