This healthiness, this breeziness, as it were, this sea-atmosphere is, however, easily accounted for by the very nature, by the very purpose of the vessel. Is not the aim of the education, of the training, on board the _Exmouth_ above all to produce sailors of the type of those who have made England what she is to-day--the Queen and the beneficent Ruler Of the Oceans and the foremost colonizing and civilizing Power on earth? Naturally, to achieve this aim the tasks which devolve alike upon instructors and instructed are manifold and heavy. How many thousand and one details have to be taught--and learned? How many thousand and one minute elements are necessary to the making of genuine seamen of these boys? As kindly paymaster, Mr. A. Thompson, puts it in his "_Exmouth_ Song":-- They are to be bothered with splice and knot, With heads and hitches and I don't know what; So many, they can't tell t'other from which; Nor a double Matthew Walker from a plain clove hitch. [Illustration: AT MESS.] But it quickly comes all right; the instructors and the lads' hearts are in their work. Thus:-- They very soon pass a torn-i-key (tourniquet) As well as any Captain in the Queen's Navee. Sometimes, to be sure; a more practical lesson, which brings the matter truly home, is wanted. As for instance when:-- They go for a pull, and whilst afloat, Catch a crab that knocks them down in the boat. Yet here, too, all things work towards a good end. Therefore:-- To them that crab a lesson will be, To make them smart sailors in the Queen's Navee.