The drill was to begin at exactly 8 o'clock. Long before that time every searchlight had been uncovered and connected up and all eyes were waiting for the Connecticut to begin the flashing. Just as eight bells were struck, when not more than half a dozen lights were visible on each ship of the fleet, a great beam of white shot out across the starboard of the Connecticut. Instantly ninety-six beams like it darted into the air and the ocean for something like a square mile became illuminated as though the full glory of the heavens had descended upon it. You who have seen Coney Island lighted up on a summer's night may form some idea of the scene if you can concentrate in your imagination the lights down there turned into a hundred great shafts, sweeping, dancing, swinging, soaring into space, each light with the sheen of a full moon brought right down within the grasp of a man who turned a cylinder about as he pleased and said to the rays go here and go there. It was like a new world sprung into existence before your very eyes. Something of the meaning of the power of a fleet of warships was revealed to you. It was merely a small part of this power, just a trifle of the strength of warships put on display because it could be tested in no other way. Each ship had six of these lights. The rules do not permit the rays of one ship to be displayed upon another because it imperils navigation for one thing, and there are also other naval reasons. It required some skill to avoid lighting up your neighbor ship. As soon as the lights were turned on the men managing them began to swing and twist them, now fast, now slowly, about each ship. When the rays struck the water, say, about 300 yards away from a ship and each light was turned slowly around the vessel, it was as if so many sprites of the sea were dancing about like children around a May pole. Then a beam would go scampering away as if it had the concentrated velocity of a hundred 12-inch shots. Then there would come a period of helter-skelter playing of the lights until a slow movement of searching on the waters was in progress. Each ship looked as if it were a thousand legged spider, each leg made up of a ray of light. Sometimes the lights of a ship would be interlaced; again they would be centered on some spot far out in the water.