district, engaged in practical exercise of their staff
lessons. On a Sunday (our loading being suspended) they boarded us to
work out in detail a question of troop transport. It was assumed that
our ship was requisitioned in an emergency, and their problem was to
estimate the number of men we could carry and to plan arrangement of the
troop decks. Their inspection was to be minute; down to the sufficiency
of our pots and pans they were required to investigate and figure out
the resources of our vessel. The officer students were thirty-four in
number; at least we counted thirty-four who came to us for clue to the
mysteries of gross and register and dead-weight tonnage. In parties they
explored our holds and accommodation, measured in paces for a rough
survey, and prepared their plans. Their Commandant (a very famous
soldier to-day) permitted us to be present when the officers were
assembled and their papers read out and discussed. In general it was
estimated that the work of alteration and fitting the ship for troops
would occupy from eight to ten working days. Our quota--of all
ranks--averaged about eleven hundred men.

[Illustration: A BRITISH SUBMARINE DETAILED FOR INSTRUCTION OF MERCHANT
OFFICERS]

The work was sound and no small ingenuity was advanced in planning
adaptations, but the spirit of emergency did not show an evidence in
their careful papers. The proposed voyage was distinctly stated to be
from Newhaven to Dieppe, and it seemed to us that the elaborate
accommodation for a prison, a guard-room, a hospital, were somewhat
ambitious for a six-hour sea-passage. In conversation with the
Commandant, we were of opinion that, to a degree, their work and pains
were rather needless. Carrying passengers (troops and others) was our
business; a trade in which we had been occupied for some few years. He
agreed. He regarded their particular exercise in the same light as the
'herring-and-a-half' problem of the schoolroom: it was good for the
young braves to learn something of their only gangway to a foreign
field. "Of course," he said, "if war comes it will be duty for the Navy
to supervise our sea-transport." We understood that their duty would be
to safeguard our passage, but we had not thought of supervision in
outfit. The Commandant was incredulous when we remarked that we had
never met a naval transport officer, that we knew of no plans to meet
such an emergency as that submitted to his officers. It was evident that