ns of the "Star Spangled Banner." And
the flag-ship left astern, the guns of the next in line boom out, and on
her also the band plays and men and officers stand to attention; and so
the next, and next. And, the battleships passed, come the armored
cruisers, riding the waters almost as ponderously as the battleships and
hardly less powerful, but much faster on the trail; and they may run or
fight as they please. After examining them, long and swift-looking, with
no more space between decks than is needed for machinery, stores,
armament, and lung-play for live men, the inevitable reflection recurs
that the advance of mechanical power must color our dreams of romance in
future. Surely the old ways are gone. Imagine one of the old three-deckers
aiming to work to windward of one of these in a gale, and if by any
special dispensation of Providence she was allowed to win the weather
berth, imagine her trying, while she rolled down to her middle deck, to
damage one of these belted brutes, who meantime would be leisurely picking
out the particular plank by which she intended to introduce into her
enemy's vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all truth to blow
her out of water.

After the cruisers passed the craft of comparatively small tonnage and
power follow--the gun-boats, transports, and supply ships; and, almost
forgotten, the monitors, riding undisturbedly, like squat little forts
afloat, with freeboard so low that with a slightly undulating sea a
turtle could swim aboard. And after them the destroyers, which look
their name. Most wicked inventions; no shining brasswork nor holy-stoned
quarter, no decorative and convenient companionway down the side--no
anything that doesn't make for results. Ugly, wicked-looking, with
hooded ports from under which peer the muzzles of long-barrelled weapons
that look as if they were designed for the single business of boring,
and boring quickly, holes in steel plate.

So the _Mayflower_ steams down the four long lines in review; and always
the batteries and bands in action, the immortal hymn echoing out like
rolling thunder between the flame-lit broadsides. From shore to shore
the cannon detonate and our fighting blood is stirred. On the pleasure
craft skirting the line of pickets like vaguely outlined picture boats
in the dim, perspective haze, the people seem also to be stirred. We
dream of the glory of battle; but better than that, the hymn which has
stirred men to some fin