, using for a desk a gun-breech or -carriage, a
turret-wall, or the deck. An officer in a fighting-top used a
telegraph-dial, and a stoker in the depths his shovel, in a chink of
light from the furnace. These letters, written in instalments, were
pocketed in confidence that sometime they would be mailed.

From the captain down each man knew that a large proportion of their
number was foredoomed; but not a consciousness among them could admit
the possibility of itself being chosen. The great first law forbade it.
Senior officers pictured in their minds dead juniors, and thought of
extra work after the fight. Junior officers thought of vacancies above
them and promotion. Men in the turrets bade mental good-by to their
mates in the superstructure; and these, secure in their five-inch
protection, pitied those in the fighting-tops, where, cold logic says,
no man may live through a sea-fight. Yet all would have volunteered to
fill vacancies aloft. The healthy human mind can postulate suffering,
but not its own extinction.

In a circular apartment in the military mast, protected by twelve
inches of steel, perforated by vertical and horizontal slits for
observation, stood the captain and navigating officer, both in
shirt-sleeves; for this, the conning-tower, was hot. Around the inner
walls were the nerve-terminals of the structure--the indicators,
telegraph-dials, telephones, push-buttons, and speaking-tubes, which
communicated with gun-stations, turrets, steering-room, engine-rooms,
and all parts of the ship where men were stationed. In the forward part
was a binnacle with small steering-wheel, disconnected now, for the
steering was done by men below the water-line in the stern. A spiral
staircase led to the main-deck below, and another to the first
fighting-top above, in which staircase were small platforms where a
signal-officer and two quartermasters watched through slits the signals
from the flag-ship, and answered as directed by the captain below with
small flags, which they mastheaded through the hollow within the
staircase.

The chief master-at-arms, bareheaded, climbed into the conning-tower.

"Captain Blake, what'll we do with Finnegan?" he said. "I've released
him from the brig as you ordered; but Mr. Clarkson won't have him in
the turret where he belongs, and no one else wants him around. They
even chased him out of the bunkers. He wants to work and fight, but Mr.
Clarkson won't place him; says he washes his han