Since the days of the March Revolution, women have not been permitted aboard the Russian fleet. The sailors, with the memory of Rasputin still fresh in their minds, settled this as soon as they took command. “Women have played so much hell in politics in the past, we better not take any chances in the future,” one of them suggested. For seven months the rule was rigidly kept. One afternoon in October, I, all unmindful of the prohibition, walked up the gang-plank of the _Polar Star_ as she lay on the gray waters of the Gulf of Finland. Half hidden in the heavy gray autumn mist were the battleships of the Baltic Fleet, decked in their proud new names of revolution. There was the one time _Nicholas II_, now the _Tavarisch_ (Comrade). There, also, were the _Grazhdanin_ (Citizen), formerly the _Tsarevitch_; and, most important of all, the _Respublica_ (Republic). Not far away lay a wounded cruiser recently returned from battle with the Germans in their attack on the islands at the entrance to the Gulf. A British submarine, came unscathed through the fighting, rode safe and snug in the tidy little harbor. Mr. Williams was with me that afternoon, and an English friend of the _Polar Star’s_ captain. The captain gave me a puzzled, almost frightened look as he saw me stepping aboard. The Englishman introduced us, and explained our desire to see the famous yacht. “I’m very sorry,” the captain said politely, “but women are not allowed aboard the fleet, It is a rule of the committee.” I must have looked my disappointment. The captain glanced sympathetically at me, then at a closed door at the end of a long passage. “The committee is meeting in there in the Tsar’s quarter. Perhaps they will make an exception. I will ask,” he said. If a Russian naval officer had been told, a year before, that the day would come when he would have to ask permission of the sailors to bring a guest aboard his own command, he would have sent for the ship’s doctor and ordered a padded cell prepared for his informant. I thanked him, and he disappeared. A few minutes later he returned. The permission had been granted. He led the way into the officers’ saloon and from there to his own cabin. All of the sacred precincts of the old days were closed to us. They were still sacred, but sacred to the new owners of the Russian navy--the delegates of the fleet, the Russian sailors. The captain was speaking: “They used to cover this with velvet when the Tsar was on board,” he said, with a sweep of his hand. “I’m sorry I can not show you the Tsar’s quarters. You would be interested. They have left the grand piano and some of the most valuable things in Petrograd.” He led us to a point where we could peep curiously down a long passage, lined on either side with the cabins de luxe of the Tsarevitch, the Grand Duchess Titania, and other members of the Imperial family, to a closed door at the end.