"If you think life in a battleship of the Grand Fleet strenuous," laughed the Captain, extending himself comfortably in his armchair before the glowing grate, "I wonder what you would have thought of the life we led in the old _Cornwall_. Not very far from a hundred and twenty thousand miles of steaming was her record for the first two years of the war, and in that time she ploughed most of the Seven Seas and coasted in the waters of all but one of the Six Continents. Always on the lookout for something or other, coaling as we could, provisioning as we might--let me tell you that coming to the Grand Fleet after that (at least until a few months had elapsed and the contrast wore off) was like retiring on a pension in comparison." He settled himself deeper into the soft upholstery, extended his feet nearer the fire, lighted a fresh cigar, and, in the hour which elapsed before the evening mail came aboard, told me of the work of the _Cornwall_ in those first chaotic weeks of the war which preceded the battle of the Falklands. "We were at Plymouth when the war began," said he, "and our first work was in connexion with protecting and 'shepherding' safely to port several British ships carrying bullion which were still on the high seas. It was a baffling sort of a job, especially as there were two or three German raiders loose in the North Atlantic, the favourite ruse of each of which was to represent itself as a British cruiser engaged in the same benevolent work the _Cornwall_ was on. Warned of these 'wolves-in-shepherds'-clothing,' the merchantmen we sought to protect were afraid to reveal their whereabouts by wireless, the consequence being that our first forerunning efforts to safeguard the seas resolved themselves into a sort of marine combination of 'Blind-Man's Buff' and 'Hide-and-Seek,' played pretty well all over the Atlantic. All the ships with especially valuable cargoes got safely to port ultimately, though none of them, that I recall, directly under the wing of the _Cornwall_. It was our first taste of the 'So-near-and-yet-so-far' kind of life that is the inevitable lot of the cruiser which essays the dual rôle of 'Commerce Protector' and 'Raider Chaser.'