the trophy, but it was nothing, mere nothing; why, we could beat it all to pieces in a fight, but of course we don't want to brag;" if you could see these men working overtime of their own volition in the Morris tube training, the miniature target shooting that is practised daily on the ships--you'd begin to realize how a ship gets all wrought up over this target practice. The Captain naturally wants his ship to come out first when you get down to the real business of a warship; the division officers want the ship to win and their own division to be first; the gun crews, with money at stake for them and with the great pride that Uncle Sam's sailormen have, down to the last man, to excel in any contest, are more eager, if that were possible, than the officers to get the shooting record. The result is that when the great day approaches every one is as much under a severe strain as a trained university football team approaching the great game of the season. Team work has been the aim of the drills. To pretend to be cool and utterly unconcerned is the little game of byplay that is going on. As the day comes on you don't hear much levity about the ship. The time of the grouch is at hand. Why, even the officers can hardly be civil to one another, and as for the men they get saying things to one another in their disputes and heat and anxiety that would make a stranger think they were dangerously near an uprising. The ordnance officer loses all his friends and the division officers glare at him and one another as if each felt sorry that the earth in general and the ship in particular was encumbered with such pitiful specimens of humanity. Now and then they get to telling one another what they think of things, not meaning a word of it, and sometimes a dispute goes clear up to the Captain for him to decide. He does decide it gravely, and perhaps when the disputants leave he turns away and smiles as he recalls that men are but children of larger growth, and after all he's glad to see these things come up because it shows how hard and earnestly every one is working and bending all his energies to be first. Be first! Be first! That's the thought of every one, and all these bickerings, sharp-tongued retorts, objections, suggestions, sullen looks--yes, even drawn faces--mean that every ounce of energy, of intensity that the men on the ship have is being expended in the task at hand.