chaff, and
when we had to hurry off as our train was about to move on, the men
cheered him to the echo. "Sure he's a great little man intoirely," I
heard a huge lump of an Irish sergeant remark to a taciturn
Highlander, who removed his pipe from his mouth to spit in unqualified
acquiescence.

They say that a destroyer represents an invaluable form of
fighting-ship, and no doubt she does; but it is ridiculous to pretend
that she makes an agreeable pleasure-boat--at all events not at night
and with all lights out. In the first place there is nothing whatever
to prevent your falling out of the vessel altogether, and as the
gangways which pretend to be the deck are littered with anchors,
chains, torpedoes, funnels, ventilators, and what not, you dare not,
if you have been so ill-advised as to remain up top, roam about in
pitch darkness even in harbour, let alone when the craft is jumping
and wriggling and straining out in the open. Having tried the high-up
portion of the ship at the front end, where the cold was perishing and
the spray amounted to a positive outrage, on the way over, I selected
the wardroom aft on the way back and found this much more inhabitable.
There was a nice open stove to sit before, a pleasant book to read,
and there was really nothing to complain about except the rattle and
whirr of the propellers. Sir W. Robertson is a very fine soldier, but
he does not cut much ice as a sailor; although it was as settled as
the narrow seas can fairly be expected to be in late autumn, he lay
perfectly flat on his back on a bunk with his hands folded across his
chest like the effigies of departed sovereigns in Westminster Abbey,
and he never moved an eyelid till we were inside the Dover
breakwaters. All the same, he stayed the course, and that is more, I
fear, than the First Lord of the Admiralty did. For the Ruler of the
King's Navy made a bee-line for the Lieutenant-Commander's own private
dug-out the moment he came aboard at Calais, and he remained in
ambuscade during the voyage.

There used to be a ditty sung at a pantomime or some such
entertainment when I was at Haileybury--music-halls were less numerous
and less aristocratic in those days than they are now--of which the
refrain was to the effect that one must meet with the most unheard-of
experiences ere one would "cease to love." We used to spend an
appreciable portion of our time in form composing appropriate verses,
as effective a mental exercise perhap