"You can't have it right for every atmospheric mood of the North Sea, I suppose!" muttered the critic. Still, it hurt his professional pride that a battleship should show up as such a glaring target even for a moment. The power of the fleet was more patent in movement than at rest; for the sea-lion was out of his lair on the hunt. Fluttering with flags at a review at Spithead, the battleships seemed out of their element; giants trying for a fairy's part. Display is not for them. It ill becomes them, as does a pink ribbon on a bulldog. Irresistibly ploughing their way they presented a picture of resolute utility--guns and turrets and speed. No spot of bright colour was visible on board. The crew was at the guns, I took it. Turn the turrets, give the range, lay the sights on the enemy's ships, and the battle was on. "There is the old Dreadnought," said an officer. The old Dreadnought --all of ten years of age, the senile old thing! What a mystery she was when she was building! The mystery accentuated her celebrity--and almost forgotten now, while the Queen Elizabeth and the Warspite, and others of their class with their fifteen-inch guns, would be in the public eye as the latest type till a new type came. A parade of naval types was passing. One seemed to shade into the other in harmonious effect. But here was an outsider, whom one noted instantly as he studied those rugged silhouettes of steel. She had twelve twelve-inch guns, with turret piled on turret in an exotic fashion--one of the two Turkish battleships building in England at the time of the war and taken over by the British. One division, two divisions, four ships, eight Dreadnoughts--even a squadron coming out of a harbour numbs the faculties with a sense of its might. Sixteen--twenty--twenty-four--it was the unending numbers of this procession of sea-power which was most impressive. An hour passed and all were not by. One sat down for a few minutes behind the wind-screen of the destroyer's bridge, only to look back and see more Dreadnoughts going by. A spectator had not realized that there were so many in the harbour. He had a suspicion that Admiral Jellicoe was a conjuror who could take Dreadnoughts out of a hat. The first was lost in the gathering darkness far out in the North Sea, and still the cloud of smoke over the anchorage was as thick as ever; still the black plumes kept appearing around the bend. The King Edward VII. class with their four twelve-inch guns and other ancients of the pre-Dreadnought era, which are still powerful antagonists, were yet to come. One's eyes ached. Those who saw a German corps march through Brussels said that it seemed irresistible. What if they had seen the whole German army? Here was the counterpart of the whole German army in sea-power and in land-power, too. The destroyer commander looked at his watch. "Time!" he said. "I'll put you on shore."