ake of its Flagship. The Destroyers, strung out
on either flank of the Battle-fleet, were rolling steadily in the long,
smooth swell, leaving a smear of smoke in their trail. Far away in the
mist astern flickered a very bright light: the invisible Light Cruisers
must be there, reflected Thorogood, and presently from the Fleet
Flagship came a succession of answering blinks. The light stopped
flickering out of the mist.

The speed at which the Fleet was travelling sent the wind thrumming
through the halliards and funnel stays and past Thorogood's ears with a
little whistling noise; otherwise few sounds reached him at the
altitude at which he stood. On the signal-platform below, a number of
signalmen were grouped round the flag-lockers with the halliards in
their hands in instant readiness to hoist a signal. The Signal
Boatswain had steadied his glass against a semaphore, and was studying
something on the misty outskirts of the Fleet. The Quartermaster at
the wheel was watching the compass card with a silent intensity that
made his face look as if it had been carved in bronze. The
telegraph-men maintained a conversation that was pitched in a low, deep
note inaudible two yards away. It concerned the photograph of a mutual
lady acquaintance, and has no place in this narrative.

Thorogood moved to the rail and looked down at the familiar forecastle
and teeming upper-deck, thirty feet below. Seen thus from above, the
grey, sloping shields of the turrets, each with its great twin guns,
looked like gigantic mythical tortoises with two heads and
disproportionately long necks. It was the dinner hour, and men were
moving about, walking up and down, or sitting about in little groups
smoking. Some were playing cards in places sheltered from the wind and
spray; near the blacksmith's forge a man was stooping patiently over a
small black object: Thorogood raised his glasses for a moment and
recognised the ship's cat, reluctantly undergoing instruction in
jumping through the man's hands.

The cooks of the Messes were wending their way in procession to the
chutes at the ship's sides, carrying mess-kettles containing scraps and
slops from the mess-deck dinner. For an instant the Officer of the
Watch, looking down from that altitude and cut off from all sounds but
that of the wind, experienced a feeling of unfamiliar detachment from
the pulsating mass of metal beneath his feet. He had a vision of the
electric-lit interior of