unny, gusty morning in early September--when
H.M.S. _Berenice_, second-class cruiser, left the Hamoaze and pushed
slowly out into the Sound on her way to the China Seas.

From the Hoe, on a grassy slope below the great hotel, John Gilbart
watched her as she thrust her long white side into view between Devil's
Point and the wooded slopes of Mount Edgcumbe; watched her as she stole
past Drake's Island and headed up the Asia passage. She kept little
more than steerage way, threading her path among anchored yachts gay
with bunting, and now and then politely slowing in the crowd of smaller
craft under sail. For it was regatta morning. The tall club flagstaff
behind and above Gilbart's head wore its full code of signals, with blue
ensign on the gaff and blue burgee at the topmast head, and fluttered
them intermittently as the nor'westerly breeze broke down in flaws over
the leads of the club-house. Below him half a dozen small boys with
bundles of programmes came skirmishing up the hill through the sparse
groups of onlookers. Off the promenade pier, where the excursion
steamers bumped and reeked and blew their sirens, the committee-ship lay
moored in a moving swarm of rowboats, dingies, and steam-launches. She
flew her B signal as yet, but the seconds were drawing on toward the
five-minute gun; and beyond, on the ruffled Sound, nine or ten yachts
were manoeuvring and trimming their canvas; two forty-raters dodging and
playing through the opening stage of their duel for the start; four or
five twenties taking matters easy as yet; all with jackyards hoisted.
To the eastward a couple of belated twenties came creeping out from
their anchorage in Cattewater.

All this Gilbart's gaze took in; with the stately merchantmen riding
beyond the throng, and the low breakwater three miles away, and the blue
horizon beyond all. Out of that blue from time to time came the low,
jarring vibration which told of an unseen gunboat at practice; and from
time to time a puff of white smoke from the Picklecombe battery held him
listening for its louder boom. But he returned always to the _Berenice_
moving away up the Asia passage, so cautiously that between whiles she
seemed to be drifting; but always moving, with the smoke blown level
from her buff-coloured funnels, with clean white sides and clean white
ensign, and here and there a sparkle of sunlight on rail or gun-breech
or torpedo-tube. She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbar