more."

And yet, if they never hit a man, this handful of sailors have been the
saving of Ladysmith. You don't know, till you have tried it, what a worm
you feel when the enemy is plugging shell into you and you can't
possibly plug back. Even though they spared their shell, it made all the
world of difference to know that the sailors could reach the big guns if
they ever became unbearable. It makes all the difference to the Boers,
too, I suspect; for as sure as Lady Anne or Bloody Mary gets on to them
they shut up in a round or two. To have the very men among you makes the
difference between rain-water and brine.

The other day they sent a 12-pounder up to Caesar's Camp under a boy who,
if he were not commanding big men round a big gun in a big war, might
with luck be in the fifth form.

"There's a 94-pounder up there," said a high officer, who might just
have been his grandfather.

"All right, sir," said the child serenely; "we'll knock him out."

He hasn't knocked him out yet, but he is going to next shot, which in a
siege is the next best thing.

In the meantime he has had his gun's name, "Lady Ellen," neatly carved
on a stone and put up on his emplacement. Another gun-pit bears the
golden legend "Princess Victoria Battery," on a board elegant beyond the
dreams of suburban preparatory schools. A regiment would have had no
paint or gold-leaf; the sailors always have everything. They carry their
home with them, self-subsisting, self-relying. Even as the constant
bluejacket says, "Right Gun Hill up, sir," there floats from below
ting-ting, ting-ting, ting.

Five bells!

The rock-rending double bang floats over you unheard; the hot iron hills
swim away.

Five bells--and you are on deck, swishing through cool blue water among
white-clad ladies in long chairs, going home.

O Lord, how long?

But the sailors have not seen home for two years, which is two less
than their usual spell. This is their holiday.

"Of course, we enjoy it," they say, almost apologising for saving us;
"we so seldom get a chance."

The Royal Navy is the salt of the sea and the salt of the earth also.

THE LAST CHAPTER

BY

VERNON BLACKBURN.

I will give no number to the last chapter of George Steevens's story of
the war. There is no reckoning between the work from his and the work
from this pen. It is the chapter which covers a grave; it does not make
a completion. A while back, you have read that surrendering wail from