longside. The ship had swung on the tide at an angle to the course
that obscured full view of the start. Those of the ship's company who
desired a full complete spectacle from start to finish were to go away
and anchor at some convenient point in the line, from which an
uninterrupted panorama could be obtained. The device had other
advantages: by anchoring midway down the course a flagging crew could
be spurred on to mightier efforts by shouts and execrations, the
beating of gongs, hooting syren and fog-horns, whistles and impassioned
entreaties.

Accordingly the more ardent supporters of the various crews, armed with
all the implements of noise and encouragement that their ingenuity
could devise, embarked. They swarmed like bees over the deck and
bridge-house, they clung to the rigging and funnel stays, and perched
like monkeys on the mast and derrick. Thus freighted the craft moved
off amid deafening cheers, and took up a position midway between two
Battleships moored in the centre of the line. The anchor was dropped,
and the closely packed spectators, producing mouth-organs and
cigarettes, prepared to while away the time until the commencement of
the first race.

They belonged to a West-country ship--that is to say, one manned from
the Dockyard Port of Plymouth. The master of the tug, whose interest
in such matters was, to say the least of it, cosmopolitan, had anchored
between two Portsmouth-manned Battleships. The position he had
selected commanded a full view of the course, and there his
responsibilities in the affair ended. On the other hand, the crews of
the two Battleships in question, assembled in full strength on their
respective forecastles in anticipation of the forthcoming race,
regarded the arrival of the tug in the light of a diversion sent
straight from Heaven.

The tug's cable had scarcely ceased to rattle through the hawse-pipe
when the opening shots, delivered through a megaphone, rang out across
the water.

"_'Ullo! Web-feet!_" bellowed a raucous voice. "_Yeer! Where be
tu?_" A roar of laughter followed this sally.

The occupants of the tug were taken by surprise. Their interests had
hitherto been concentrated in the string of whalers being towed down to
the distant starting-point by a picket boat. Before they could rally
their forces a cross-fire of rude chaff, winged by uproarious laughter,
had opened on either side. Catch-word and jest, counter and repartee
utterly unintell