the proudest moment of my life, but a little bit risky,” and it was. But there was a homelike atmosphere in that hotel which I have never found elsewhere, and which disappeared with the man who had created it. There was an incident connected with a dinner to celebrate the inception of the Midland Railway which is noteworthy in the light of recent events and would no longer be possible. The function was held on October 21, and I was called upon to respond to the toast of the Navy, having had due notice of what was expected of me. I did so in some sort of fashion, but when I went to lunch on board my ship the next day, my chief observed in his plain-spoken way that I had made a nice mess of it the preceding evening. “How?” I asked. “It was the anniversary of Trafalgar,” he said, “and you didn’t mention it.” It is well to remember that a similar lapse would no longer be possible, for through the genius of Arnold White in suggesting that a wreath should be laid on the Nelson Columns on Trafalgar day, and the efforts of the Navy League in giving effect to the idea, the event is now celebrated from one end of the empire to the other. Certainly there is no child in New Zealand to-day ignorant of the fact that October 21 is Trafalgar day, and attaches due importance to it accordingly. [Illustration: THE MASTER OF THE “KAIKOURA”] It was rather the fashion both in Australia and New Zealand about this period to take great interest in anything that resembled a race between two well-known steamers. In fact it reminded me of Mark Twain’s stories of racing on the Mississippi. There were two vessels on the coast about the speeds of which all sorts of tales were told. One was the _Takapuna_, an express vessel carrying the mail from Wellington to Auckland _via_ the west coast; the other was the _Rotomahana_, a beautiful vessel built by Denny’s and credited with a speed of seventeen knots. At all events she was supposed to be the fastest thing on the coast and I dare say was. But we in the _Kaikoura_ had rather an idea that we could do a bit of steaming on a pinch, and so it came to pass that these two ships were lying in Wellington harbour one fine afternoon both bound to Lyttelton and to sail about the same time. The idea of racing had not entered my head at the time of my leaving the wharf, and as lookers-on said afterwards, “I went down the middle of the harbour as usual with a leadsman in both chains.” That was chaff, of course, but I never cut corners unduly fine. On this particular occasion the _Rotomahana_ left a short time after me, and to my astonishment came and squeezed in between me and the first turning point. She was crowded with passengers going down to Christchurch races, and they howled at us in derision, holding up rope ends and offering us a tow if we wanted one. We had started under easy steam, as was usual in coasting, and we had in fact been overhauled very quickly, but the indignity of the proceeding rather vexed me, so I sent for my