on her hull, so as to look like a neutral. But until she had got clear of Falmouth this inscription was covered over with a plate bearing her real name. In order to be able to pick up signals at sea she was fitted with a small wireless receiving set, the wire being easily disguised in the rigging. Rolling about in the swell of the Atlantic or the chops of the English Channel for four weeks at a time is apt to get on the nerves of a crew unable to have a stretch ashore: so in order to keep everyone on board fit and cheery, boxing-gloves and gymnastic apparatus were provided. [Illustration: [_Photo, Opie_ Q SAILING-SHIP “MITCHELL” Notice the after gun disclosed on the poop. To face p. 68] No one could deny that she was an efficient ship. During her first cruise she used to carry out gun-trials at night; hatches sliding smoothly off, guns swinging splendidly into position, and a broadside fired as soon as the bell for action sounded. Until that bell was pressed, none of the crew was allowed to be visible on deck other than the normal watch. One of the difficulties in these ships was that the decks might be damaged with the shock of firing, but in the _Mitchell_ they had been so strengthened that not a seam was sprung nor so much as a glass cracked. You may guess how perfect was her disguise from the following incident. Pretending she was a Spaniard, she was one day boarded at sea and examined by some of the Falmouth patrol trawlers. These were completely deceived, for even though their crews had watched her fitting out, yet she had painted herself a different colour the night before leaving that port. Even in the Bay of Biscay several British transports on sighting the ‘Spaniard’ altered course and steamed away, evidently suspecting she was co-operating with a submarine. She was back from her first cruise on July 25 just before midnight and left again at midnight on August 3-4. This time she impersonated the French three-masted schooner _Jeannette_, a vessel of 226 tons, registered at La Houle, for _Mitchell_ now made a cruise in the neighbourhood of the Channel Islands and the western channel. During the next few months she continued to sail about the last-mentioned area, in the Bristol Channel near Lundy Island, and in the Bay of Biscay, sometimes as _Jeannette_, sometimes as the _Brine_, of St. Malo, and sometimes as the Russian _Neptun_, of Riga.