Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

After seamanship came gunnery. Each of the different types of heavy but
finely made weapons had to be learned in detail--a feat of memory when
it came to the watch-like mechanism of the Maxim. Guns were disabled and
had to be put right. They missed fire and were made by the
instructors--old naval gunners--to play every dastardly trick
conceivable. The final test which had to be successfully passed was the
dismantling of each type of gun used in the auxiliary fleet and the
reassembling of it.

With gunnery came also the marks and uses of the different kinds of
ammunition, the systems of "spotting" and "range-finding." Every gun had
its officer crew and the rapidity of fire was recorded. Each man in turn
was chosen to give the necessary orders and to judge the ranges and
deflections. In this way not only was the practical work learned by
heart, but also the theory of naval gunnery, so far as it related to the
smaller types of weapon.

The use of the depth charge, both mechanically and tactically, was
expounded and practically demonstrated, together with that of the
torpedo, the mine, mine laying and sweeping, and the peculiarities of
various explosives. Rifle and revolver practice was encouraged, and
morse and semaphore signalling formed part of the daily routine.

The training was not entirely preparatory for work afloat. Squad and
company drill, rifle and bayonet exercise, and manoeuvring in extended
order formed a part of the comprehensive training. One day, not many
weeks after their arrival, the officers whose fortunes have been
followed found themselves shouting orders and directing by arm and
whistle lines of dusty _camarades_ advancing over a common in the most
approved military fashion.

The training was not all hard work. The gathering of so many men from
all quarters of the world, with a wealth of experience and adventure
behind them, was in itself a source of mutual interest--and incidentally
an education in modern British Imperialism. Scarcely any part of the
world went for long unrepresented in either the wardroom or gunroom of
the old cruiser _Hermione_ in those days of war, and many were the yarns
told of Alaska days, hunting in Africa, experiences in remote corners of
North America, pearling in the Pacific and life on the Indian frontier,
to say nothing of wild nights on the seven seas. Grey heads and round,
boyish faces, the university and the frontier, with a camar