Then they were taken forward, past the orderly confusion of the "booms," to a round pill-box, described as the Conning Tower. with twelve-inch walls of Krupp steel, and introduced to an assortment of levers and voice-pipes, mysterious dials, and a brass-studded steering-wheel. Then up a ladder to the signal-bridge, where barefooted men, with skins tanned brick-red and telescopes under their arms, swung ceaselessly to and fro. They examined the flag-lockers—each flag rolled neatly in a bundle and stowed in a docketed compartment—the black-and-white semaphores, and the key of the mast-head flashing lamp that at night winked messages across five miles of darkness. From then onwards that afternoon became a series of blurred impression of things mysterious and delightfully bewildering. They carried away with them memories of the swarming forecastle and batteries, where they saw the sailor-man enjoying his leisure in his own peculiar fashion. Of the six-inch breech-block that opened with a clang to show the spiral grooved bore—rifled to prevent the projectile from turning somersaults.... The younger girl wiped a foot of wet paint off the coaming of a hatch and said sweetly it didn’t matter in the least. They invaded the sanctity of the wireless room, with its crackling spark and network of wires, and listened, all uncomprehending, to the petty officer in charge, as, delighted with a lay audience, he plunged into a whirl of technical explanations. And, lastly, the Mother was handed the receivers, and heard a faint intermittent buzzing that was a ship calling querulously three hundred miles away. After that they descended to electric-lit depths, and were invited into cabins; they visited the "Slop-room" (impossible name), where they fingered serge and duck with feminine appreciation. They saw the nettings where the hammocks were stowed, and the overhead slinging space—eighteen inches to a man! And so back to the upper deck, to find the picket-boat again at the bottom of the ladder. * * * * * "Hasn’t it been lovely!" gasped the elder girl, as they walked back to their hotel. "Scrumptious!" assented her sister. "And _did_ you notice the boy who steered the boat that brought us back?—he had a face like a cherub looked at through a magnifying-glass!" Meanwhile, he of the magnified cherubic countenance was rattling dice with a friend preparatory to indulging in a well-earned glass of Marsala. Outside the gunroom pantry the grimy gentleman whose sphere of duty lay in the picket-boat’s stockhold sought recognition of his services in an upturned quart jug. Which is also illegal, and contrary to the King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions. *VIII.* *THE LEGION ON THE WALL.* "Not now. Not now. Not yet." —_Sea Law and Sea Power_.