Three flights up I clambered my erratic way before, on the boat deck in the lee of a launch, I found a vantage sufficiently high and sheltered to stand in comfort. The sight was rich reward for the effort. Save for an ominous bank of nimbus to westward, the wind had swept the coldly blue vault of the heavens clear of cloud, and the low-hanging winter sun to south'ard was shooting slanting rays of crystalline brightness across a sea that was one wild welter of cotton wool. I have seen--especially in the open spaces of the mid-Pacific, where the waves have half a world's width to get going in--heavier seas and higher seas than were running that morning, but rarely--not even in a West Indian hurricane--more vicious ones--seas more palpably bent on going over, or through a ship that got in their way, rather than under, as proper waves should do. And in this obliquity they were a good deal more than passively abetted by a no less viciously inclined wind, which I saw repeatedly lift off the top of what it appeared to think was a lagging wave, and drive it on ahead to lace the heaving water with a film of foam or dust the deck of a battleship with snowy brine. But it was the ships themselves that furnished the real show. Of all craft that ply the wet seaways, the battleship is the least buoyant, the most "unliftable," the most set on bashing its arrogant way through a wave rather than riding over it, and--with the increasing armour and armaments, and the crowding aboard of various weighty contrivances hitherto unthought of--this characteristic wilfulness has tended to increase rather than decrease since the war. As a consequence, a modern battleship bucking its way into a fully developed mid-winter gale is one of the nearest approaches to the meeting of two irresistible bodies ever to be seen. The conditions for the contest were ideal that morning. Never were seas more determined to ride over battleships, never were battleships more determined to drive straight through seas. Both of them had something of their way in the end, and neither entirely balked the other; but, drawn as it was, that battle royal of Titans was a sight for the gods. The battleships were in line abreast as I came up on deck, and holding a course which brought the wind and seas abeam. We were all rolling heavily, but with the rolls not sufficiently "synchronised" with the waves--which were charging down without much order or rhythm--to keep from dipping them up by the ton. If the port rail was low--as happened when the ship was sliding down off the back of the last wave--the next wave rolled in-board, and (save where the mast, funnels, and higher works amidships blocked the way) drove right on across and off the other side. If the port side had rolled high as an impetuous sea struck, the latter expended its full force against the ship, communicating a jar from foretop to stokeholds as shivering as the shock of a collision with another vessel.