he "growlers," those almost wholly submerged masses of
ice that the sailor fears most. Most of the bergs in the two irregular
lines were distant, and showed as patches of curiously luminant
whiteness against the intense blue of the sky. Some were close enough
for us to see the wonderful semi-transparent green of the cracks and
fissures in their sides and the vivid emerald at the base that the
bursting seas seemed to be eternally polishing anew.

When _Renown_ was sighted, a mere smudge on the horizon, we saw the
flash of her guns and heard faintly the thud of the explosions. She
was getting in some practice with her four-inch guns on the enticing
targets of the bergs.

We were too far away to see results, but we were told that as a
spectacle the effect of the shell-bursts on the ice crags was
remarkable. Under the explosions the immense masses of these
translucent fairy islands rocked and changed shape. Faces of ice
cliffs crumbled under the hits and sent down avalanches of ice into the
furious green seas the shocks of the explosions had raised.

This was one of the few incidents in a journey made under perfect
weather conditions in a vessel that is one of the "wonder ships" of the
British Navy. The huge _Renown_ had behaved admirably throughout the
passage. She had travelled at a slow speed, for her, most of the time,
but there had been a spell of about an hour when she had worked up to
the prodigious rate of thirty-one knots an hour. Under these test
conditions she had travelled like an express with no more structural
movement than is felt in a well-sprung Pullman carriage.

The Prince had employed his five day's journey by indulging his fancy
for getting to know how things are done. Each day he had spent two
hours in a different part of the ship having its function and mechanism
explained to him by the officer in charge.

As he proved later in Canada when visiting various industrial and
agricultural plants, His Royal Highness has the modern curiosity and
interest for the mechanics of things. Indeed, throughout the journey
he showed a distinct inclination towards people and the work that
ordinary people did, rather than in the contemplation of views however
splendid, and the report that he said at one time, "Oh, Lord, let's cut
all this scenery and get back to towns and crowds," is certainly true
in essence if not in fact.

It was in the beautiful morning of August 11th that the Prince made his
first