gs were accidental. Poor quality paint and variable untimely
mixings contributed, but it was mainly by crew troubles (deficiency and
incapacity) that we came by our first camouflage. As needs must, we
painted sections at a time--a patch here, a plate or two there--laid on
in the way that real sailors would call 'inside-out'! We sported suits
of many colours, an infinite variety of shades. Quite suddenly we
realized that grey, in such an ample range--red-greys, blue-greys,
brown-greys, green-greys--intermixed on our hulls, gave an excellent
low-visibility colour that blended into the misty northern landscape.

Bolshevik now in our methods, we worked on other schemes to trick the
murderer's eye. Convention again beset our path. The great god
Symmetry--whom we had worshipped to our undoing--was torn from his high
place. The glamour of Balances, that we had thought so fine and
shipshape, fell from our eyes, and we saw treachery in every regular
disposition. Pairs--in masts, ventilators, rails and stanchions,
boat-groupings, samson posts, even in the shrouds and rigging--were
spies to the enemy, and we rearranged and screened and altered as best
we could, in every way that would serve to give a false indication of
our course and speed. Freighters and colliers (that we had scorned
because of ugly forward rake of mast and funnel) became the leaders of
our fashion. We wedged our masts forward (where we could) and slung a
gaff on the fore side of the foremast; we planked the funnel to look
more or less upright; we painted a curling bow wash over the propellor
and a black elaborate stern on the bows. We trimmed our ships by the
head, and flattered ourselves that, Janus-like, we were heading all
ways!

Few, including the enemy, were greatly deceived. At that point where
alterations of apparent course were important--to put the putting Fritz
off his stroke--the deck-houses and erections with their beamwise fronts
or ends would be plainly noted, and a true line of course be readily
deduced. With all our new zeal, we stopped short of altering standing
structures, but we could paint, and we made efforts to shield our
weakness by varied applications. Our device was old enough, a return to
the chequer of ancient sea-forts and the line of painted gun-ports with
which we used to decorate our clipper sailing ships. (That also was a
camouflage of its day--an effort to overawe Chinese and Malay pirates by
the painted resemblance to the gun-