aderie seldom
equalled.

The period of training in the old cruiser was drawing to a close when
each officer was appointed to "Boat Duty." There were five launches on
duty at a time, and their crews had to be instantly ready day and night.
The most coveted were the two 21-knot boats, used almost exclusively for
the conveyance of pilots to and from the hospital ships and transports.
Then came the patrol boat, a slow old tub with a comfortable cabin, and
work out on Southampton Water at night. The three "duty boats" were for
emergency use and were held at the disposal of the naval transport
officer.

The duties on each boat varied and were in the nature of training. The
pilot boat was required to lie alongside the cutter, out beyond the
harbour, and to convey the pilots at high speed to and from the stream
of shipping. It was a pleasant duty which entailed alternate nights in
the generous, breezy company of the old sea-dogs of the cutter, with
occasional races at half-a-mile a minute through the darkness and spray
to the moving leviathans of the ocean.

The patrol ambled up and down the sheltered waterways during the day and
night, examining the "permits" of fishermen and preventing the movement
of small craft during the hours of darkness, when the long lines of
troop-ships were leaving for France.

The work of the duty boats varied from day to day, but there was always
the morning and evening mail to be collected from and delivered to the
ships of the auxiliary fleet lying out in the fair-way.

When this spell of water-police work was over there came a few days'
practice in the handling of the fast sea-going patrol launches, or
"M.L.'s," about which so much has since been written in the daily
papers.

After the cramming received in the lecture-rooms, the arduous drill and
the somewhat monotonous work on the slow-moving tenders, the runs
seaward on these new and trim little vessels, the manoeuvring at
nineteen knots, the breeze of passage and the feeling of controlled
power acted as an elixir on both mind and body. Then came firing
practice in the open sea. The sharp crack of cordite, the tongues of
livid flame, the scream of the shells, the white splashes of the
ricochet and the salt sea breezes.

Two days later the preliminary training was over and there loomed ahead
a period of hard study at the Royal Naval College.

CHAPTER III

A NAVAL UNIVERSITY IN TIME OF WAR

BUILT by King Charles I. for the S