Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships present can be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed at mast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an object of scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded by right-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt. "An’ I’ll give you fifteen seconds’ grace," added the speaker. The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days—it was summer at Malta—the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, the pendants "bent" to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of the sixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burst in a torrential downpour over the harbour. At that instant a signal crept to the flagship’s yard-arm. On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter of the bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and the Second Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light. "Stand by—thirteen, fourteen..." counted the small figure standing in the driving rain on the flagship’s bridge, watch in hand: "fifteen, Hoist!" Then for the first time in his short career he deserted his post. Clattering pell-mell down the ladders to the Gunroom, where the remainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flung back the drab-coloured curtain. "Got him!" he shouted triumphantly. "By the aching stomach, I had him _cold_!" * * * * * I have said that of the Chosen Four—three saw visions, while the other bewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his best trousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguilettes of a Flag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisation and Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographer once had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, in uniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to her companion, "Oh, isn’t he a darling!" The relevancy of this anon. Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to fame through the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rank the cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and her relations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to have lost interest in the Service. The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in the Service. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes of a jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round his neck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession of the mutilated body. "Sure," said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping his cutlass with a tussock of grass, "we couldn’t lave him there—an’ himself somewan’s darlin’, likely..." Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists. *XI.* *A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.*