They had dinner, and with it, because it was such a great occasion, a bottle of "Sparkling Cider," drunk out of wine-glasses to the inscrutable Future. Another boy was dining with his parents at a distant table, and at intervals throughout the meal the embryo admirals glanced at one another with furtive interest. After dinner the mother and son sat on the balcony watching the lights of the yachts twinkling across the water, and talked in low voices scarcely raised above the sound of the waves lapping along the quay. At times their heads were very close together, and, since in the star-powdered darkness there were none to see, their hands met and clung. She accompanied him on board the following day, to be led by a grave-faced Petty Officer along spotless decks that smelt of tar and resin. She saw the chest-deck, where servants were slinging hammocks above the black-and-white painted chests—the chest-deck with its wide casement ports and rows of enamelled basins, and everywhere that smell of hemp and scrubbed woodwork. "Number 32, you are, sir," said the Petty Officer; and as he spoke she knew the time had come when her boy was no longer hers alone. They bade farewell by the gangway, under the indifferent eyes of a sentry, and Number 32 watched the frail figure in the waterman’s boat till it was out of sight. Then he turned with a desperate longing for privacy—anywhere where he could go and blubber like a kid. But from that time onwards (with the rare exceptions of leave at home) he was never to know privacy again. *II.* The old _Britannia_ training consisted of four terms, each of three months’ duration, during which a boy fresh from the hands of a tutor or crammer had many things to learn. He was taught to "drop everything and nip!" when called; how, when, and whom to salute. To pull an oar and sail a boat; to knot, splice, and run aloft; how to use a sextant. He learned that trigonometry and algebra were not really meaningless mental gymnastics, but a purposeful science that guided men upon trackless seas. In short, at an age when other schoolboys see their education nearing its end, he had to begin all over again, to be moulded afresh for a higher purpose. The path of the "New" in those days was by no means strewn with roses. Jerry had to submit to strange indignities and stranger torments at the hands of Olympian "Niners" (Fourth-term Cadets). He had to accustom himself to bathe, dress and undress, to sleep and to pray, surrounded by a hundred others. There was also the business of the hammock, in and out of which he was learning to turn without dishonour.