The cutter had passed beyond the outskirts of the Fleet, and the decorum required of the occupants of a Service boat in such surroundings no longer ruled their behaviour. They sang and shouted for sheer joy of bellowing, full-lunged, across the untrammelled water. No one whose life is not spent in the narrow confines of a man-of-war, walking paths sternly ruled by Naval Discipline, can realise the intoxicating effect of such an emancipation. The mysterious workings of the Midshipman-mind found full play on these occasions, as they tumbled about in the bottom of the boat in the unfettered enjoyment of a whole-hearted "scrap." If you have ever seen young foxes at play, buffeting each other, yelping with simulated anguish, nuzzling endearments half savage and half in play, you have an idea of the bottom of a cutter full of Midshipmen proceeding on a picnic. It was an embodiment of youth triumphant, shouting with laughter at the Jest of Life. "Where shall we go?" asked Standish, smiling, during a lull when the crew sat panting and flushed with exertion, grinning at each other over the tops of the thwarts. "Any blooming where," shouted Thorogood. "As long as it is out of sight of the Fleet. I feel I've seen enough of the Silent Navy for an hour or two." Then raising his voice he chanted: "_Put me upon an island where the girls are few..._" "Right," retorted the Indian-rubber Man. "We'll go round this little headland. Ready about! Check the fore sheet! Come aft out of the bows, Pills, you clown, unless you want us to miss stays." "I don't want to go to an island," cried the Surgeon plaintively, "where the girls are few." He surveyed the heather-crowned islets surrounding them on all sides, the lonely haunts of cormorants and black-backed gulls. "I'm all for houris and sirens and whatnots----" The foresail swung across and knocked him into the bottom of the boat. "You frail Ulysses!" exclaimed Thorogood, as they set sail on the new course. "You aren't to be trusted in these populous parts. We must lash you to the mast!" "And stop his ears with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition. A party set off into the bows to put the proposal into immediate execution, but the imminence of land and a shout from the helmsman arrested them in their purpose: "Down foresail. Top up mainsail!" The cutter, with the skiff towing peacefully astern, glided into a little bay where miniature cliffs, some twenty feet in height, rose from a narrow shale-strewn beach. The anchor plashed overboard. "_Here we are, here we are, here we are again!_" carolled the Surgeon lustily. "Come alongside, skiff! The landing of the Lancashire Fusiliers is about to commence under a withering fire!"