However, after all is said and done, Christmas is the rarest day in the naval calendar, the celebration in American fashion being never neglected on a United States man-of-war in port or at sea. The ship is dressed fore and aft with banners, and in port her decks are piled with green stuff. In any of the ports in low latitudes, like Callao or Montevideo, the mass of palms and ferns distributed on Christmas on the spar deck of a warship gives the vessel a lovely holiday appearance. Bluejackets always hang up their socks on Christmas eve. Each takes a new pair out of his ditty bag and strings it to the foot last of his hammock. Examined in the morning, they are commonly found filled with fine, dusty coal, lumps of salt-water soap or pieces of broken candle, but their owners hang them up from year to year, willing to sacrifice a pair of socks to the perpetuation of the custom. On Christmas day there are all manner of games on the spar deck. They are for the most part humorous games and are devised chiefly for the amusement of the men who through misconduct are not permitted to spend the day ashore. In the evening there is always some good music in the forecastle or on the berth deck. On some ships the bluejackets essay the most ambitious airs, and if the bandmaster takes care to put the singers of the crew on the right path one of their Christmas night concerts is worth going a long way to hear. CHAPTER IV SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT Soldiers who serve afloat--such are the men composing the United States Marine Corps. Lack of military qualities in the sailor led to the corps' formation in the first days of the navy, nor has the passing of the years wrought any material change in the character of Jack Tar. Formidable in impetuous assaults, he lacks the steadiness and discipline necessary in sustained conflicts and in the effective use of the rifle, and so with the navy's growth the Marine Corps has come to constitute one of its most important branches. The marines are useful in times of peace for police duty in the navy yards and on shipboard, but it is when the country is engaged in war that they most fully justify their existence. Then it is their duty to man the rapid-firing guns of our warships, fill vacancies at the other guns, with their rifles scour the decks of the enemy from the tops, the poop and the forecastle, cover boarding parties with their fire and repel boarders with fixed bayonets. Should the enemy gain a foothold they must gather at the mainmast, so as to command the deck. They must make the small arms effective and disable the enemy's men while the great guns, with which the marines have nothing to do save in case of emergency, play havoc with his ship.