For weeks, and in some cases months, the racing crews of launches, cutters, gigs, and whalers, officers and men alike, had carried through an arduous training interrupted only by attentions to the King's enemies and the inclemencies of the Northern spring. And now that the day had come, both spectators and crews moved in an atmosphere of holiday and genial excitement heated by intership rivalry to fever-point. A regatta is one of the safety valves through which the ships' companies of the silent Fleet in the North can rid themselves of a little superfluous steam. Only those who have shared the repressed monotony of their unceasing vigil can appreciate what such a day means. To be spared for a few brief hours the irksome round of routine, to smoke Woodbines the livelong day; to share, in the grateful sunlight, some vantage point with a "Raggie," and join in the full-throated, rapturous roars of excitement that sweep down the mile-long lane of ships abreast the sweating crews. This is to taste something of the fierce exhilaration of the Day that the Fleet is waiting for, and has awaited throughout the weary years. A Dockyard tug, capable of accommodating several hundred men, lay alongside. The ship had swung on the tide at an angle to the course that obscured full view of the start. Those of the ship's company who desired a full complete spectacle from start to finish were to go away and anchor at some convenient point in the line, from which an uninterrupted panorama could be obtained. The device had other advantages: by anchoring midway down the course a flagging crew could be spurred on to mightier efforts by shouts and execrations, the beating of gongs, hooting syren and fog-horns, whistles and impassioned entreaties. Accordingly the more ardent supporters of the various crews, armed with all the implements of noise and encouragement that their ingenuity could devise, embarked. They swarmed like bees over the deck and bridge-house, they clung to the rigging and funnel stays, and perched like monkeys on the mast and derrick. Thus freighted the craft moved off amid deafening cheers, and took up a position midway between two Battleships moored in the centre of the line. The anchor was dropped, and the closely packed spectators, producing mouth-organs and cigarettes, prepared to while away the time until the commencement of the first race.