hief Buffer[2] coxin' the launch?"

The Quartermaster of the Morning Watch made a motion with an enormous
freckled paw as if stroking an invisible kitten. "I ain't sayin'
nothin' against 'em. Nothin' at all. What I says is, 'Wait an' see.'
I ain't a bettin' man, not meself. But if anyone was to fancy an even
'arf quid----"

The shrill whistle of the call-boy's pipe clove the babel of the
crowded mess-deck.

"A-a-away Racing Whaler's Crew!"

shouted the cracked high tenor. "Man your boat!"

"There you are!" said the Blacksmith, a silent, bearded man. "What are
we all 'angin' on to the slack for? Come on deck. That's the first
race."

Regatta-day, even in War-time, was a day of high carnival. The dozen
or so of Battleships concerned, each with its crew of over a thousand
men, looked forward to the event much in the same spirit as a Derby
crowd that gathers overnight on Epsom Downs. The other Squadrons of
the vast Battle-fleet were disposed to ignore the affair; they had
their own regattas to think about, either in retrospection or as an
event to come. But in the Squadron immediately concerned it was, next
to the annihilation of the German Fleet, the chief consideration of
their lives, and had been for some weeks past.

For weeks, and in some cases months, the racing crews of launches,
cutters, gigs, and whalers, officers and men alike, had carried through
an arduous training interrupted only by attentions to the King's
enemies and the inclemencies of the Northern spring. And now that the
day had come, both spectators and crews moved in an atmosphere of
holiday and genial excitement heated by intership rivalry to
fever-point.

A regatta is one of the safety valves through which the ships'
companies of the silent Fleet in the North can rid themselves of a
little superfluous steam. Only those who have shared the repressed
monotony of their unceasing vigil can appreciate what such a day means.
To be spared for a few brief hours the irksome round of routine, to
smoke Woodbines the livelong day; to share, in the grateful sunlight,
some vantage point with a "Raggie," and join in the full-throated,
rapturous roars of excitement that sweep down the mile-long lane of
ships abreast the sweating crews. This is to taste something of the
fierce exhilaration of the Day that the Fleet is waiting for, and has
awaited throughout the weary years.

A Dockyard tug, capable of accommodating several hundred men, lay
a