And yet the poetry has not gone out of it all. The poetry of the sailing-frigate was lyric. That of the steel battle-ship is Homeric. Nothing save a war of the elements has the power of a battle-ship in action. Ten thousand tons of steel,--a mighty fortress churning speedily through the water fills the spirit with wonder at the works of man and makes any engine for his destruction a possibility. Away down below the water-line a score or more of furnaces, white-heated, roar furiously under the forced draught, and the monster engines move their ponderous arms majestically, and in rhythm and harmony mask their awful strength. Before the furnace-doors, blackened, half-naked stokers move, silhouetted against the crimson glare, like grim phantoms of the Shades. The iron uprights and tools are hot to their touch, the purple gases hiss and sputter in their very faces, yet still they toil on, gasping for breath, their tongues cleaving to their mouths, and their wet bodies steaming in the heat of it. [Illustration: MODERN SEA MONSTERS IN ACTION] The deck above gives no sign of the struggle below. Where, in the old days, the sonorous trumpet rang out and the spar-deck was alive with the watch who hurried to the pin-rail at the frequent call, now all is quiet. Here and there bright work is polished, or a lookout passes a cheery call, but nothing save the man at the wheel and the officer of the watch shows the actual working of the ship. Seamanship, in the sense of sail-handling, is a thing of the past. Though there is no officer in the navy who could not in an emergency handle a square-rigger with the science of an old sea-captain, the man on the bridge has now come to be first a tactician and after that a master of steam and electricity. In the sea-battles of 1812 the captain was here, there, and everywhere in the thickest of the fight, inspiring by his personal magnetism the men at the guns. He was the soul of his ship. To-day the sea-battle is a one-man battle. The captain is still the heart and soul of the ship, but his ends are accomplished in a less personal way. His men need not see him. By the touch of a finger he can perform every action necessary to carry his ship to victory. He can see everything, do everything, and make his presence everywhere felt by the mere operation of a set of electrical instruments in front of him. The intricacies of his position are, in a way, increased. He may lose a boiler, split a crank, or break an electrical connection, but the beautiful subtleties of old-fashioned seamanship have no place whatever on the modern war-ship.