s service of my
invaluable public reputation for accurate judgment and quick decision.
Mr. Dawson's suggestion--I should, perhaps, rather say my own
suggestion--shall be laid before the Board at once."

Though the stiff mind of Lord Jacquetot was not very quick to take in
a new idea, no man alive was better equipped for practically working
out a naval scheme. While the First Lord was assuming that sorely
damaged battle-cruisers, or vessels which could be passed off in place
of them, needed but his summons to spring from the deeps, Jacquetot
had pressed a bell and ordered a messenger to request the immediate
presence of the Fourth Sea Lord, within whose province was the whole
art and mystery of ship construction. Upon the appearance of this
officer the plan was gone over anew, and he was asked whence and
within what time he could produce two presentable dummies to do duty
in the Sound for the entertainment of the population of Plymouth,
Devonport, and Stonehouse. There were, said he, two if not three at
Portsmouth, constructed out of old cargo tramp hulls for the
mystification of the enemy. They had already done duty as newly
completed battleships, but with a little alteration to the canvas of
their funnels, the lath and plaster of their turrets and conning
towers, and the wood of their guns, they might be made into perfect
likenesses--at a distance--of the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_. The
ships' carpenters, he explained, could make the changes while the
dummies were coming round to Plymouth. Seated at the desk of Lord
Jacquetot he wrote the necessary orders in code, his Chief signed
them, and they were put at once on the wires for Portsmouth. The
sea-cocks, said the Fourth Lord, would be opened twenty miles from
land so that the "_Intrepid"_ might come in sadly down by the bows,
and the "_Terrific"_ with a list of twenty degrees, pluckily towing
her sorely crippled sister. With a chart of Plymouth Sound before
them, the two officers settled the precise spot, sufficiently remote,
yet well within sight of the Hoe, at which the two unhappy
battle-cruisers should come to rest upon the mud. "It will be a most
pathetic spectacle," said the Fourth Lord laughing, "and I will bet a
month's pay and allowances that at the distance not a man in the Three
Towns will have the smallest suspicion that the genuine
copper-bottomed _Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ are not ditched before his
blooming eyes." He rose from the table, upon which the c