Then the semaphore is lighted up and the arms of lights go jiggering this way and that way, just as the gaunt black and white automata do in the daytime, and you find the boys reading off the message as easily as a grown person can spell cat when the letters are big and the print is plain. You sometimes wake up in the night when you are at anchor and look out of your port. Rare is it that you do not see a semaphore or an ardois combination flashing. When you ask about it in the morning the officers will tell you that it probably was the signal boys talking with one another and that it is allowed because it is good practice to let them gossip when there is nothing else going on and the night watches are long and tedious. Invariably one boy will make the signal letter of another ship where he suspects a friend is on duty at the signals and this is what he says: "How is it for a game of flat?" meaning an unofficial talk. "All right," comes the answer: "go ahead." Then those two boys chat over all sorts of things, chaff each other, make appointments for the first liberty, talk of the latest ship gossip, and all that, but there's one feature about it that's peculiar. The messages are always in polite form. It's always, "Will you kindly?" or "Please be good enough," or something in that fashion. No signal boy ever forgets himself or the dignity of his place in a game of talk. Besides, there might be officers observing things and it is never nice to have your name put on the report. You are brought up at the mast and you might get five days in the brig on bread and water or something like that if you exchanged language that was not seemly for use on a warship's signals. And then in bridge work in cruising there is that difficult job of keeping distances. The favorite cruising formation in this fleet is at 400 yards distance from the preceding ship. The Louisiana was fourth in whatever line was formed. That meant 1,200 yards from the flagship. Now the engines of no two ships move the 16,000 tons of those ships at exactly the same speed through the water. You may know theoretically how many revolutions of the propellers are needed to go at the rate of ten, eleven, twelve or even more knots an hour, but even then one ship will inch up, so to speak, foot up might express it better, and you have got to correct this all the time or you will be crawling up on the quarter deck of the ship in front of you, or lagging so behind that the ship after you will be in danger of crawling up on your own deck.