half that between numbers
one and two, and three and four. She had beautiful lines, and looked as
though she ought to be an excellent sea boat. Her armament consisted of
one 12-pounder, mounted aft, and five 6-pounders, all quick-fire guns
capable of discharging ten shots per minute. She also mounted on the
after-deck two 18-inch torpedo tubes, firing Whiteheads of an effective
range of eight hundred yards at a speed of thirty knots, and carrying a
charge of one hundred and seventy-one pounds of gun-cotton--enough to
destroy a battleship, if it happened to hit the right spot. The dock
foreman, who happened to be an Englishman, told me that she was British
built--a Thorneycroft boat, he believed--and that, on trial, she had
steamed as much as thirty-three knots! Here was a craft which any
reasonable man might be proud to command, and I there and then
registered a vow that it should not be my fault if she did not make a
name for herself during the coming war.

She was painted white, with a lead-colour bottom, and her four funnels
were white with black tops. But they were burning and scraping off all
her outside paint, from the sheer-strake downward, and I asked the
foreman what colour they were going to repaint her. He answered that
this had not yet been decided, whereupon I requested him to provide me
with three small pots of paint, white, black, and blue, and with these
three I compounded a smoky-grey tint of medium depth which I believed
would be practically invisible by day and quite invisible at night, and
this tint I applied to a small piece of board which I requested the
foreman to take care of for me.

Then I went aboard and had a look at the _Kasanumi's_ interior
arrangements. The engine and boiler-rooms, the torpedo room, and
magazine naturally absorbed a large proportion of the interior space,
but the accommodation for officers and crew, though a trifle cramped,
was sufficient to ensure quite a reasonable amount of comfort.
Everything of course was done to economise space, and the fittings were
all quite plain, but the cabin which would be mine was a compact, cosy,
little cubbyhole, with a tiny stove to warm it in cold weather, and I
believed I could make myself very happy and comfortable in it, although
the beams were so low that I should never be able to stand upright. The
engines were superb pieces of machinery, as of course they had need to
be, to drive the boat at a speed of thirty-three knots,