I found the docks without difficulty, and in the smaller graving dock lay the _Kasanumi_, my first command! Seen thus, out of water, she looked a craft of quite important dimensions, as indeed she was, being more than two hundred feet in length. She had four funnels, the space between the second and third being only about half that between numbers one and two, and three and four. She had beautiful lines, and looked as though she ought to be an excellent sea boat. Her armament consisted of one 12-pounder, mounted aft, and five 6-pounders, all quick-fire guns capable of discharging ten shots per minute. She also mounted on the after-deck two 18-inch torpedo tubes, firing Whiteheads of an effective range of eight hundred yards at a speed of thirty knots, and carrying a charge of one hundred and seventy-one pounds of gun-cotton--enough to destroy a battleship, if it happened to hit the right spot. The dock foreman, who happened to be an Englishman, told me that she was British built--a Thorneycroft boat, he believed--and that, on trial, she had steamed as much as thirty-three knots! Here was a craft which any reasonable man might be proud to command, and I there and then registered a vow that it should not be my fault if she did not make a name for herself during the coming war. She was painted white, with a lead-colour bottom, and her four funnels were white with black tops. But they were burning and scraping off all her outside paint, from the sheer-strake downward, and I asked the foreman what colour they were going to repaint her. He answered that this had not yet been decided, whereupon I requested him to provide me with three small pots of paint, white, black, and blue, and with these three I compounded a smoky-grey tint of medium depth which I believed would be practically invisible by day and quite invisible at night, and this tint I applied to a small piece of board which I requested the foreman to take care of for me.