"In its way, this is quite the nastiest bit of water in all the world," said Admiral Sturdee, turning from the rail of the bridge with an expression of relief on his face. "There is a number of places where the tides run more swiftly than here, but none (in my own experience at least) where they run in so many directions at the same time. The waters for miles are a continual succession of giant whirlpools. These make navigation difficult and uncertain all over the Firth, but in the zone of the tide-rip (as you have just seen) they are infernal. Sometimes--even in stormy weather--we go out without having any trouble whatever at the 'rip'; again, as to-day, with little wind and less sea, it picks up a squadron of warships aggregating over two hundred thousand tons in displacement, and shakes them like a terrier worrying a string of sausages. When it's in this kind of a temper, threading the passages at the entrance of a South Pacific coral atoll (to most sailors the last thing in difficult navigation) is like sailing down a countryside canal in comparison. Have you ever seen anything like it?" "Never at sea," I replied. "Indeed, the only time--anywhere--I ever saw waters take such wanton liberties with craft trying to navigate them was in the White Horse Rapids of the old Klondike route, and those boats were only twenty or thirty-footers of green whipsawed lumber. But aren't there certain kinds of weather when it is next to physically impossible for any kind of a ship to live here? When you get a well-developed gale blowing against the tide, for instance?" "Ah, that's the combination that does it," said the Admiral with a grim smile, turning to go down to the Chart House with the Flag Captain. "You remember what happened to those two destroyers here in that blow of eight or ten days ago (only one survivor out of the crews of both), and you might ask X---- to tell you what befell the old '----' the night she started out into a storm." The Flag Lieutenant came and leaned against the rail at my side. "It must have happened just about where we are now," he said, rubbing a cinder down into the inner corner of his eye and out on the bridge of his nose in approved fashion. "The tide-rip may ambush you almost anywhere inside of here, and--especially if the weather is thick--you are lucky if your ship doesn't end up somewhere along the forty or fifty miles of cliffy coast that hems in this accursed pocket of water. The old '----' did not go ashore, but her case is notable as being probably the worst bit of bashing a battleship ever had from seas alone.