I am glad to say that the engines appeared to be particularly interesting, and kept my friend and his escort busily engaged for about half an hour. At length my companions returned. I was partially recovered. I was no longer as limp as a bit of string; I was by this time almost as strong as a piece of address cardboard. "You _should_ have seen the engines," said my friend in a tone of reproach, "they were excellent." I replied that I would take his word for it. Then we went to see the guns themselves. Well, I frankly confess I was disappointed. They were the usual sort of guns. Big tubes and all that kind of thing. Rather silly than otherwise. "They are only fired twice a year," said our guide, as if that enhanced their value. And now I began to understand why the casemates had such an "apartments furnished" air about them. The windows had brass fittings. I expected to see curtains hanging from above, and was quite disappointed not to find a canary in a birdcage hanging down between the window and the gun muzzle. "Dear me!" I observed, "so these are the guns! They are fired I supposed by Number One?" Our conductor was absolutely startled at my remark. Many years since I was a Volunteer Artilleryman, and I had stumbled on a technical term. "Number One" is the gunner of the firing-party who fires (_i.e._ lets off) the gun. The result of this display of knowledge was an elaborate description by our guide of the character of the gun bristling with technicalities. (Wishing to protect the Government secrets I do not transcribe it.) Then we went to see how the gun was loaded, how it was laid or aimed. At last we came to the look-out tower. "Only room for one gentleman," said our guide; and I nobly yielded first place to my friend. He went up, and his head disappeared. I could only see his body from the neck downwards. He appeared very agitated. Later on he came down, and saying there was a "stiffish breeze," invited me to take his place. Ascending slowly, greatly impeded by fit and fatigue, I got to the top of the ladder. My head disappeared, and my body I knew must have become greatly agitated. And this was not surprising. For my body was still in the hottest room of the local Chinese Turkish Bath, which had grown hotter than ever, and my head had apparently suddenly found itself on the summit of Mont Blanc. Yes, and in winter weather. For a moment it was all I could do to avoid what seemed to me to be avalanches, frozen thunderbolts and Atlantic icebergs. They seemed to be dashing over me. Clinging for dear life to what appeared to be a sort of glassless cucumber frame was our conductor. He explained something or other in a voice that sounded as if he were a ventriloquist who was making a man say "Good night" at the top of a very high chimney.