nd "beef boats" travel with all fleets.

The everlasting holystoning of wooden decks and the dim lanterns hung at
intervals from low-hanging beams--they are gone. The only dim lanterns
now are the "battle-lanterns" in use at night war practice; and they are
swung to steel bulkheads by electric wires. Quarter-decks, forecastle
heads, and bridges are still planked on the big ships, and such do still
have to be holystoned on special days; but the great stretches between
decks are now laid in linoleum on the hard steel itself; electric lights
are all over the ship, and, as for the low beams, the new big ships are
so high-girdered that hammock-hooks on the berth-deck have to be made
extra long so the men won't have to get stepladders to turn in. A
battleship nowadays is about 600 feet long, 100 feet wide, has seven or
eight decks, with turrets, bridges, military masts, and smoke-pipes
topside. Between decks are magazines, storerooms, engine-rooms,
boiler-rooms, dynamo-rooms, mess-rooms, ice-rooms, repair-shops,
staterooms, office-rooms, sick-bays, galleys, laundries, pantries--but
only ship-constructors can tell you offhand how many hundreds of
compartments are below decks of a present-day big war-ship.

She is a great workshop, an office-structure, a big power-plant, a
floating hotel--and a few other things. But above all she is meant to be
a home for ten or twelve hundred officers and men.

A man may not be given duty on a battleship or battle cruiser; he may be
sent to a scout cruiser or a beef boat or a gunboat, which, being
smaller, will bounce and roll around more in heavy weather and not offer
so much room to move around in; but he will get used to the bouncing
around, and always he will find some variety and some comfort in his
daily life.

That item of comfort might as well be counted in as important. It is
something to know that, no matter what else happens, there are hot meals
waiting a man three times a day, and a dry change of clothing, and a dry
hammock to turn into nights. Even on deck duty in bad weather a man can
get into slicker, rubber boots, and rain-hat, and at the worst be almost
comfortable.

Navy life is not meant to be a perpetual entertainment--not though they
do hold regular smokers on the quarter-decks of the big ships. To lie
for months off a tropic port waiting for something to happen--that is
not exhilarating; and coaling ship, even with the band playing--that is
no joy. But the watching o