There are four sights in this war that have etched themselves more deeply upon the plates of my memory than any of a hundred others which are themselves unforgettable—my first heavy artillery bombardment in France, with a wallowing wave of men sweeping forward behind the smoke and dust clouds of an advancing barrage, the meteor trail across the northern sky of the first Zeppelin brought down over England, the fantastically foreshortened peaks of southern Macedonia—with Serb and Bulgar locked in death grips in the cockpit of a snow-choked valley—from an aeroplane, and the Grand Fleet taking form out of a North Sea mist on a winter's morning. And it is the last of these—though the only mind picture it has left is of endless lines of grey ships ploughing silently through grey waters to the blending line of sea and misty sky, while the others were pulsing with motion, vibrant with sound and vivid with the incomparable appeal of the drama in which the actors are fighting and falling, living and dying men—that stirs, and will stir, me longest and strongest of all.

Just why this is I cannot say, but some hint of it may be found in the fact—so well known to all lovers of the ocean—that with the sea it is more what one feels than what one sees that moves; and with the Grand Fleet, which is instinct with the soul of the sea which it commands, it is perhaps the feeling that a single sweep of the eye comprehends the one mightiest force in mankind's mightiest struggle, which invests those silent lines of steaming warships with a power to stir the imagination (in my own case at least) as nothing else on earth can stir it, nor—save only the sight of those same ships going into action to fulfil the purpose for which they were created—ever will.

My first sight of the Grand Fleet at sea I owe to the ready thoughtfulness which those who know him best so often refer to in speaking of Admiral Sir David Beatty. For three days I had been "standing by" on the —— waiting to go out into the North Sea on a jaunt which had been vaguely described to me as likely to develop "interesting possibilities," and that famous cruiser was under steaming orders at the moment an invitation came from the Flagship of one of the Battleship Squadrons to come over to a concert being given that afternoon aboard the "Theatre-Ship" Gourko. There was just time to take the show in before our departure the Captain of the —— reckoned, and volunteered to sail the Staff Surgeon and me over in his galley.

There was a notable attendance at the concert, and in the little company which were invited to Admiral Madden's cabin for tea, after the playing of "God Save the King" and "The Star Spangled Banner" had signalised the end of an enjoyable programme, were at least a dozen men whose names would be entitled to head the list of the makers of modern naval history. While I was draining a single cup of tea I heard the Admiral who had won the Battle of the Falkland Islands explain the idiosyncrasies of North Sea meteorology; another, who had directed naval operations at the Dardanelles, expatiate on the difficulties of raising pigs on his Squadron's refuse since the "Food Economy" campaign got well under weigh in the Grand Fleet; a third, who had held high command at Jutland, outline a plan for elevating the popular taste for good music; and a fourth, who had done notable work at Dogger Bank, lay down the law on the points of Irish terriers. The only one whom I heard speak of "Things Naval" was the Commander-in-Chief, who was enticed into "shop" after inquiring how my plans were progressing in connexion with some voyages in light craft which I had asked permission to make.

On my telling him I expected to put to sea with the light cruisers in a couple of hours, he stood for a moment in thought, and then said quietly, "If you can throw your kit together and go aboard one of the battleships before the —— sails, I think that I can promise that you will see—in the course of the next thirty-six hours—a sight such as you have never seen before, one that you will never forget."

I hesitated for a moment, for a voyage in the historic ——, with the ever-present possibility of stumbling into an action with her, was something I had been planning for and counting upon for weeks.

"You can come out with us again in another week or so," said the Captain of the ——; "you may not be in a position to connect with what the Commander-in-Chief has to offer for a good deal longer than that."

"But my own ship is in quarantine," I said, suddenly recollecting that there had been a sporadic outbreak of mumps or something of the kind reported from the Erin in the course of the last day or two.

"Between thirty and forty capital ships, to say nothing of light cruisers and destroyers, we ought to be able to find room to stow you away for a couple of days," cut in Admiral Beatty with just the flicker of one of his rare smiles. "Let Captain —— arrange it for you. Perhaps Admiral Sturdee"—and a moment later the victor of the Battle of the Falklands was extending me a warm invitation to come to his Flagship as his guest for the events of the next few days. By dint of the liveliest kind of hustling, I was just able to return to the ——, get my togs picked up and clamber aboard the barge Admiral Sturdee had kindly despatched before the grinding of chains on hawse-pipes told that the light cruisers were shortening in preparatory to weighing anchor and departing on their own little North Sea sideshow.

An hour later I had climbed the gangway of my new ship, greeted several friends of a former visit in the wardroom, made a hurried shift of uniform in the comfortable cabin which had been prepared for me, and was seated at dinner with Admiral Sturdee and his Staff. Of the personal side of my voyage with this most highly distinguished and most deservedly loved of British admirals—an experience the more treasured in that it chanced to coincide with the last occasion on which he was destined to go to sea on active service before taking over an important command ashore—it is not my purpose to write here.

At another time, with Admiral Sturdee's concurrence, I shall endeavour to set down a few of the things—mostly reminiscent of events in which he had played an historic part, with occasional observations on international developments, political and social,—of which he spoke at table, in quiet intervals on the bridge, or while taking a few minutes' refuge from the wind in the cold little box of his Spartan sea-cabin.

There was nothing to differentiate our preparations for departure on the following afternoon from those for one of the several kinds of routine work that a squadron of battleships performs in the course of its regular duties. The "buzz" had gone around, however, that we were going out for a "P.Z."—a general exercise of all the units of the Battleship and Battle Cruiser fleets, with their auxiliaries—and the smoke which began rolling up from scores of funnels as the early afternoon hours wore on seemed to give confirmation to the theory that something was afoot which would result in the putting to sea of the massed might of the modern capital ships of the Navy. The British Lion was certainly going out on a prowl, and there was always the chance that he might be getting his claws into something. The infectious spirit of the "great game" blew like a fresh breeze through the mess-decks, and there was a new sparkle in every eye that met mine as I worked forward and upward to the fore bridge, a smile on every ruddy face, a jaunty set to every pair of swinging shoulders.

From the lofty vantage of the bridge I could see slim, gliding shapes—dusky Maltese against the brown-black background of a jutting headland—which were already threading the mazes of the booms, and knew that they were some of the sportive shoals of smaller craft—probably light cruisers—which would weave a far-flung circle of offence around the bulkier bullies of the Battle Fleet itself.

Now the long, low ships of a line that had been anchored for a mile on our starboard bow began slowly swinging in the boiling welter of reversed propellers, and then, when their dark noses were all pointing down the proper course as though strung on a single tow-line, they started in easy, effortless glide around the end of the squat, round-topped island which masked the exit through which they must pass.

"The 'Cats' are under weigh," said an officer at my elbow, pointing to where the graceful shadow of the Tiger and the grim profile of the Lion flitted in blank silhouette across a background, a stretch of cliff-begirt beach where the drifted snows of a recent storm still lay banked in a solid wall of dazzling white. Other shadows with historic names flashed into vivid contrast for a few moments, and then dissolved into misty indistinctness as they passed on to where their protective colouring merged with the watery background; and behind these glided the silhouettes of other ships which I knew to be "super-cats," ships with names yet unknown to fame, but which were reputed to be able to outrun and outclaw their predecessors by as wide a margin as they outbulked them. One by one the gaunt profiles sharpened into sudden brightness and then died down like the lights of a train dashing across a trestle into a deep cut.

"It will be our turn presently," the Flag Lieutenant said, as he turned a sheaf of signals just passed up to him. "Each division gets under weigh to a time-table, and any substantial deviation from this by even one ship would upset the schedule for all of the Squadrons following."

A quick order, the breaking out of a string of signal flags, the jerky, serpentine inrush of the already shortened anchor-chain, and our ship had caught the impulse of her accelerating screws and began slowly gathering headway. Down past the head of line after line she steamed, the men of each ship as she came abreast standing at attention to salute the Flag of the Admiral. Eight ships in "Line Ahead," the Squadron glided easily up the flow toward the gate.

As we passed one great tower of steel after another a breezy midshipman began speaking of their "points" and "records" as he might have reviewed the exhibits at a Bench Show. There was the Marlborough, which the Germans had "sunk" with a torpedo at Jutland, and there—"that cubistic nightmare" (referring to her scientific camouflage)—the new "——," which was supposed to "absorb" torpedoes as a Stilton cheese does port, and to improve day by day under the treatment. "The matlotes will tell you," he said, "that she goes off and mooches round the U-boat lanes just to tempt them to use up their mouldies on her so that there won't be so many left for merchant ships!"

And there was the ——, and he went on to tell me of one of her gunners who, writing home after the battle, had stated that there was a time when he had been unable to make his way aft from his turret on account of the heaps of dead bodies blocking the way.

"You know very well that we were not hit during the battle," the irate Captain, before whom the culprit had been forthwith, admonished. "What prompted you to tell such a mischievous lie?"

"I was upholding the glory of the Gran' Fleet, Sir," was the unabashed answer. "I couldn't bear to 'ave 'em thinkin' at 'ome that the blinkin' battle cruisers 'ad been 'avin' all the fun o' the go."

Another even line of foretops, seeming to float through the air above the skyline of an interposing island like a file of flying geese, told us, as we cleared the barrage, that another Squadron was getting under weigh; but these, with the "Cats" creeping off under their back-blown smoke trails, into a bank of purple mist, were all that were in sight when the swift winter twilight shut down and left us ploughing alone down the lane between our screening destroyers.

It was just at this time—in the short 'tween-daylight-and-dark interval—that a strange thing happened. The sea was smooth, silken smooth, with hardly more than an eight- or ten-knot breeze ruffling its surface, and the ship was—so far as pitch or roll were concerned—as steady as though chocked up in a dry dock. Suddenly, a couple of cables' lengths ahead, a thin white line of foam appeared, serpentining along at about right angles to our course. It appeared to be quite the same sort of little froth-path that one has come to know in the seas of all the world as the marker of the place where tide meets tide, a phenomenon indicating conflicting but rarely dangerous countercurrents.

I noted that a half-dozen glasses were trained on the wriggling streak, and was wondering what there could be about it to excite such anxious interest, when the Flotilla Leader on our port bow swung swiftly round through eight or ten points and came charging straight down towards us. No helm ever spun a ship like that, I told myself, even before the violently tossing foam geyser under the "amok's" stern revealed that both helm and screws were doing their utmost to throw her back toward her original course. I had barely time to observe with astonishment that the destroyer on our starboard bow was plunging off in a totally different direction than her "opposite number," when an invisible hand seemed to reach up from below and seize our ship in its vice-like grip. Round swung that 25,000 tons of steel without offering any more apparent resistance than a drifting skiff or a floating log.

There was no knowing until that instant which way the ship was going to swing, and the Chief Navigating Officer's sharp "Hard-a-port!" down the voice-pipe was the only order there was any use in giving, when it became clear that we were being turned six or eight points to port on a course calculated to present pretty much of her whole starboard side for the oncoming destroyer to flatten itself against. The grind of the labouring helm ran like a shudder from stern to bow, but the avoidance of a collision was up to the destroyer rather than the battleship.

Out of the tail of my eye (as I focussed my attention on more imminent developments) I saw that the other battleships and destroyers were cutting capers similar to our own. No two of the dozen or more craft appeared to be steering the same course, and one or two of the destroyers, like helplessly skidding motors on a muddy street, had actually turned through thirty-two points and were heading back on their proper courses.

It was not an especially close call with our Flotilla Leader after all, for her helm cut into water, "standing still" sufficiently to give it a grip, while she yet had room to clear our swinging bows by a score of yards. Wallowing enormously, she spun swiftly round and darted back to her station, while the more ponderous battleship was still reeling dazedly like a half-drunken man trying to orientate after picking himself up from a fall. Then, silently and mysteriously as they had come, the treacherous swirls and eddies rolled on, and ten minutes later—a row of blurred black towers dimly discernible against the falling curtain of the night,—the Squadron was again in "Line Ahead" and steaming quietly toward the open sea in its wonted order.

"In its way, this is quite the nastiest bit of water in all the world," said Admiral Sturdee, turning from the rail of the bridge with an expression of relief on his face. "There is a number of places where the tides run more swiftly than here, but none (in my own experience at least) where they run in so many directions at the same time. The waters for miles are a continual succession of giant whirlpools. These make navigation difficult and uncertain all over the Firth, but in the zone of the tide-rip (as you have just seen) they are infernal. Sometimes—even in stormy weather—we go out without having any trouble whatever at the 'rip'; again, as to-day, with little wind and less sea, it picks up a squadron of warships aggregating over two hundred thousand tons in displacement, and shakes them like a terrier worrying a string of sausages. When it's in this kind of a temper, threading the passages at the entrance of a South Pacific coral atoll (to most sailors the last thing in difficult navigation) is like sailing down a countryside canal in comparison. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"Never at sea," I replied. "Indeed, the only time—anywhere—I ever saw waters take such wanton liberties with craft trying to navigate them was in the White Horse Rapids of the old Klondike route, and those boats were only twenty or thirty-footers of green whipsawed lumber. But aren't there certain kinds of weather when it is next to physically impossible for any kind of a ship to live here? When you get a well-developed gale blowing against the tide, for instance?"

"Ah, that's the combination that does it," said the Admiral with a grim smile, turning to go down to the Chart House with the Flag Captain. "You remember what happened to those two destroyers here in that blow of eight or ten days ago (only one survivor out of the crews of both), and you might ask X—— to tell you what befell the old '——' the night she started out into a storm."

The Flag Lieutenant came and leaned against the rail at my side. "It must have happened just about where we are now," he said, rubbing a cinder down into the inner corner of his eye and out on the bridge of his nose in approved fashion. "The tide-rip may ambush you almost anywhere inside of here, and—especially if the weather is thick—you are lucky if your ship doesn't end up somewhere along the forty or fifty miles of cliffy coast that hems in this accursed pocket of water. The old '——' did not go ashore, but her case is notable as being probably the worst bit of bashing a battleship ever had from seas alone.

"She was going out by herself—bound for the Mediterranean, if I remember rightly—and what happened is probably largely due to the fact that they drove her, with the tide, into the teeth of the storm (perhaps to get out where there was more sea-room as quickly as possible) instead of slowing down and taking it easy, as we would be inclined to do now, even with ships a good deal bigger and more powerful. Most of these things have to be learned by experience, and if the '——' hadn't learned the lesson and paid the price, probably one of the others of us would have had to.

"At any rate, she bucked right into a mountain of a wave that swept her with hundreds—perhaps thousands—of tons of solid green water. When it had passed, her bridges and superstructures—everything, indeed, but her mast and turrets—was crushed down and carried away. A number of men went over the side with the wreckage, and most of those above decks not carried away were killed. The Captain was picked up on the quarterdeck, alive but with his legs broken. Nothing but a battleship could have survived such a blow, though it is quite possible that a more buoyant craft would have ridden higher over the wave and so shipped less solid water. I have seen a good many warships that have dragged themselves back to port after a battle, but never a one that presented such a sight as the poor old '——' did when she limped home the morning after the night before. She is still in commission, I believe, but there can't be an unreplaced rivet in her that doesn't have a crook in its neck to remind it that something hit her that night in Pentland Firth."

The Flag Lieutenant turned his glass for a moment toward a succession of flashes, in which a destroyer was pouring out its troubles to us from the outer darkness, and then leaned back on the rail again. "It would be hard to say whether the Firth is really our worst enemy or our best friend," he resumed presently. "There is a good deal to be said on both sides. First and last, it has probably bashed us about a good deal more than the Hun has; but, at the same time, there is no use denying that it has prevented him from making us a good deal of trouble he might have made if there had been an ordinary respectable sheet of water running right up to the front door of our refuge.

"In the first year of the war we used to let off guns at periscopes and the wash of conning towers every few days in the Firth, and the very enterprising U-boat to which they were supposed to belong came to be known by the nickname of the Pentland Pincher. Before very long, however, we learned that the supposed periscopes were only the necks of swimming cormorants, and the 'conning tower washes' certain characteristic little humps of Pentlandesque waves. We also learned—in one way or another—that a U-boat would have about as much chance of running submerged through one of those googly tide-rips as it would have of ascending the Thames to London, while for it to go down and try to rest on the bottom would be about like a Zeppelin trying to come to roost among the splintered peaks of the Dolomites. Indeed, the best way for you to visualise the bottom of Pentland Firth is to think how the Bernese Oberland looks from the summit of the Matterhorn. It is the currents of the Atlantic and the North Sea rendezvousing over such a bottom which makes the Pentland Firth what is probably the most temperamental bit of water in the Seven Seas."

With scarcely a motion, save the quiet insistent urge of the spinning turbines—something sensed rather than felt, save in the after part of the ship—we ploughed on into a night that required small effort to fancy as filched from a Mediterranean April or a North Pacific June. The breeze—no more than a zephyr purring contentedly over our starboard quarter—was redolent with the "landsy" smell of the North Scottish hills, and the indolent ebony billow heaving in from the North Sea had just enough energy to rise with a friendly swish and blink blandly up at us through the "eye-holes" of the hawse-pipes.

"We're watching you," those transient foam flashes seemed to signal, "but we're not going to try to do anything to disturb you, leastways not to-night. Might just as well make a stand-easy of your watch."

It must have been the almost tropical mildness of the night which turned the Admiral's mind, after he had rejoined us on the bridge, back to his days in the South Seas. Leaning lightly on the rail, and with only an occasional step aside for a squint at the soft round glow of the binnacle, or a swift glance to where barely discernible flashes of white revealed the bow-wave and wake of a screening destroyer, he spoke of the stirring events of ninety-nine when, commanding H.M.S. Porpoise, and weeks away from the nearest cable, he had co-operated with the American naval forces there in an endeavour to save the Samoas from the grip of a far extended tentacle of the German octopus, already stirring in its slime and reaching outwards to fasten its hold upon any of the desperately desired "sun-places" its suckers might encounter.

On a later occasion Admiral Sturdee narrated at length the events of the astonishing drama that was played out by the reef and palm of fair Apia, and dwelt on the significance which attached to them in the light of later developments; but for the moment—under the influence of this "maverick" of a tropic night that had strayed into a North Sea January—it was of the softer side of the idyllic South Pacific existence that he spoke. The Chief Navigating Officer, who had once been in a cruiser on the Australian station, came and joined us when his watch was over, and for an hour—or was it two or three?—we talked of siva-sivas and hulas, of swims with the village maidens in the pool under the sliding waterfall of Papa-sea; of moonlight dances under the coco-palms of Tutuila, of kava drinking and luaus of hot-stone-roasted sucking pig; of missionaries, traders, and "black-birders"; of Stevenson, Louis Becke, and "Bully" Hayes; of the thousand and one customs and characters, dangers and delights, that go to complete the idyll in those sensuous latitudes fanned by the perfumed breath of the South-East "Trade."

The Admiral was just telling of his youthful embarrassment the first time the taupo or village maiden of Apia insisted on encircling his neck with the same fragrant garland of Tiare Tahiti which was looped around her own, when a signal was brought him by the Flag Lieutenant. He read it by the reflected light from the binnacle, grinned amusedly, and handed it to the Flag Captain. The ripple of a quick smile ran over the grave countenance of the latter, and the play of light and shadow on two or three other faces which pushed into the pale glow of the binnacle seemed to indicate that the signal was something out of the regular routine orders. Presently the Admiral beckoned me inside the glassed-in bridge cabin and handed me the sheet of white paper. This, as nearly as may be set down, was what I read.

"S.N.O. at —— reports unusual sound in hydrophones. Supposed to be hostile submarine —— miles S.E. of —— Island."

"—— miles sou'-east of —— Island," mused the Admiral. "H'm. Just about the position of the Squadron at the present moment. H'm.... Think I may as well go down and get a few hours' sleep. Have to turn out early in the morning. Be sure and be up here at daybreak," he added, turning to me. "Perhaps you'll find the sea will not be quite as empty then as it seems to be to-night."

Giving my arm a friendly squeeze in passing, he disappeared down the ladder, followed by his Flag Lieutenant.

"The Admiral doesn't appear to be much disturbed about that U-boat we are supposed to be steaming over," I remarked to the Commander, who had come up a few minutes previously.

"What U-boat?" he asked. "Oh, the one in the signal. Well, hardly. He knows by long experience that the average U-boat skipper won't take any risks he can avoid with a warship behind a destroyer screen, especially where there is a chance of throwing his mouldies into some merchantmen and drowning a lot of women and children. There is only one thing the Hun is more careful about than his torpedoes, and that is his own thick hide."

The waning moon had risen just before midnight, and my last look round before turning in revealed, to port, one line of destroyers—swift, blue-grey arrows—shooting smoothly along in the light of it, and, to starboard, another line of dark shadows silhouetted against the silvered waters to the south-east, with the leader cutting a fluent furrow across the moon-track itself.

The "To-ra-loo" of the imperious call to "Action Stations" awoke me before dawn on the following morning, and it was through a tangle of men, hammocks, and unreeling fire-hose, and in the bedlam of clanging water-tight doors and the banging of hurrying feet upon steel ladders, that I wriggled forward and upward toward the fore bridge. The sharp blast which cut my face as I emerged upon the boat deck gave warning that the weather had indulged in one of its sudden overnight changes, and that the day would be one of characteristic North Sea rawness. Ducking through a fluttering string of mounting bunting on the signal bridge, I gained the next ladder and came out upon the fore bridge, with an open view before me at last.

Early as it was, Admiral Sturdee was there before me, and wearing no more protection against the penetrating cold than was afforded by an ordinary service cap and uniform, a short overcoat, and a light pair of overshoes. In contrast, I felt almost ashamed of the ponderous duffle coat—a half-inch thick of solid wool, and equipped with a heavy hood—with which I had fortified myself against the weather.

"You're just in time," he greeted me cheerily with. "Come and look who's here."

It was an ashen grey morning, with a low mist just beginning to thin into luminous strata in the light of the rising sun. Overhead it was clear, with indications good for a brightening all around before long. At first I was conscious of only the ships of our own Squadron, with those of the Second Division steaming hard to close up the "night interval" between them and those of the First. Then, abeam to port, I espied a similar line, and beyond that another and still another. And farther still, slipping ghostily along in the depths of the retreating mist, was even another line.

"Shades of Father Neptune!" I gasped. "Do they go on into the Skager Rak? Where did they all come from?"

The Admiral smiled, led me over to the starboard side, and pointed to where, dimly discernible against the smoke pall with which they had smudged the immaculate south-eastern heavens, but still unmistakable, was a file of great ships driving hard to push up to their appointed station.

"Some of them have come a long way,"[B] he said, with a twinkle in his steady grey eye, "but we're all the gladder to have them here. As for the others," he went on, going back to the port side, "we're almost at the extreme right of our present formation, and, until the sun licks up a bit more of this mist, you will not be able to see more than halfway across the Battle Fleet, to say nothing of the battle cruisers and all the other ships that are out to-day. It's far from being a favourable morning on which to have your first view of the Grand Fleet at sea; just about the same shifting sort of visibility, indeed, that we had at Jutland."

"It may be so," I assented; "yet to me there is a suggestion of going-on-to-the-ends-of-the-earth in the way those farthest lines melt into the mist that would be quite absent if it was clear enough really to see the last of them. As it is, it takes no effort at all of the imagination to fancy those lines going on, and on, and on, into the farthest bight of the farthest sea in which their power is felt. I wouldn't have a clear horizon for the world to-day. The Grand Fleet will never be so big to me as it is this morning. I know just how big it is (for I've learned the names of all its units, ship by ship), and I know just about how much sea it takes up (for I've looked down on the whole of it from a 'kite' at Scapa); but to-day—to me—it reaches to the ends of the Seven Seas, and I don't want any shifting of the scenery to destroy my illusion."

The Fates were kind, for that mask of luminous mist (though it interfered considerably with the effectiveness of the "P.Z." as an exercise) did not clear away sufficiently during all the time we were out to make it possible to see, from even the loftiest vantage, the whole of the Fleet at one time. So that first illusion still holds, and so strongly that I cannot visualise it—even to-day, many weeks after—without a catch in my breath and a "choky" feeling in the throat. I have seen "all the way across" the Grand Fleet several times in the interim, and once I have been with it when it tore across the North Sea on what appeared the hottest kind of a scent; and yet—that first impression has kept a place all its own.

Straight on eastward pressed the swiftly steaming Fleet, straight on into the alternately advancing and receding mist wall, until the snowbirds from the "other side"—wind-blown victims of the capricious shift of weather—were fluttering about our bows, and the blurred outline of what appeared to be a rocky coast rose distantly in the smother ahead. Then, at a signal from the Flagship, we turned ten or a dozen points and stood away to the south on a course that might lead anywhere from the Skager Rak to Heligoland Bight. That manoeuvre would have been a sight for a clear to-day, and to be followed from a balloon, if one were to have his choice of vantages. A hundred ships—more or less—were steering steadily on one course. Suddenly a string of multi-coloured bunting breaks out beside the half-blurred blue-black tower of a unit steaming somewhere toward the middle of the formation, and instantly the whole great body begins to turn. Vastly more than a million tons of steel are wheeling in unison at the flutter of that single signal, and yet in any one ship no more than a few quiet words down a voice-pipe—orders less loud and no more peremptory than that with which one would bring his spaniel to heel—have been spoken.

"Steady by compass!" you hear (if you chance to be standing close to the quiet-voiced Chief Navigating Officer bending above the binnacle); and presently, "Port fifteen!" At practically the same moment those same orders have been given on the leading battleship of every line, and round they go together, throwing swirling wakes with short sharp waves running off their outer curves and transiently smooth patches in the embrace of the inner ones. When the turn is complete and the leading ships ploughing the desired course, the laconic "Midships" completes the brief series of orders.

To a novice the countless destroyers shuttling in every direction between, ahead, and astern of the turning lines of battleships and wallowing wildly in the confused welter of conflicting wakes appear to be wheeling as aimlessly as range cattle "milling" in a blizzard. In reality their moves are calculated to a nicety, and they turn and "click" to place with almost the precision of the plungers of the combination of a safe.

The "flexibility" of the Grand Fleet, in spite of its increasing size—it has seldom if ever gone to sea but what it was stronger by many thousands of tons than when it last emerged—is a source of never-ending wonder to one to whom it has not become a commonplace by endless repetition, and the swiftness and ease with which it changes form at the will of the Commander-in-Chief never fails to remind me of one of those fascinating wire toys which an ingenious child can push or pull into a great variety of geometrical shapes. A few points' alteration of course changes a squadron—or a half dozen of them steaming abreast—into any desired "Line of Bearing," which might be what would happen in case it was deemed advisable to start zigzagging to avoid a submarine. A squadron may go from "Line Ahead" to "Line Abreast" in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, according to the course the latter is going to hold, and so on through other formations, simple and complex. How this works in practice I had a good opportunity to see before we returned to Base.

The general practice on a "P.Z." for the Grand Fleet is to make a comprehensive sweep around the North Sea for two or three or four days, and then—if none of the enemy has been caught up in the net—to chivy together as large a force as possible of battle cruisers, light cruisers, and anything else available and have a sham fight with them. Failing in the former on this occasion, recourse had been had to the latter, and our Squadron was just getting ready to "open" on some dusky, mist-masked shapes suspected of being the "enemy," when the incident occurred to which I have referred.

"To 'equalise' the opposing forces," Admiral Sturdee was explaining to me, "it is laid down that each ship in the Fleet we are meeting shall represent a Squadron of the enemy. For instance, that light cruiser to the right—the one making all that smoke—represents an 'enemy' Battleship Squadron, which, incidentally, is steaming hard in the hope of getting in a position to waft us a breeze on a 'windy corner' when we begin to turn. Incidentally"—and the lines of his firm mouth relaxed in a quick smile—"I think we shall have turned before he gets to the place he's driving for. Now that ship there (I think she's a battle cruiser) represents——"

Just then his Flag Lieutenant, stepping rather more quickly than usual, handed him a signal. "Now fancy that," he said, after running his eye over the laconic message; "there's an enemy submarine ahead of us."

"And what might she represent, sir?" I asked, my mind still engrossed with the intricate strategy of the "battle" into which we were rushing at twenty knots an hour.

The Admiral had turned to read a second signal—this one from the Flagship—after which he was busy giving some orders on his own account. My very natural query would have remained unanswered had it not been overheard by the Commander, who had just come up from below.

"Officially," he said with a laugh, "she probably represents the Kaiser, or Von Tirpitz, or whoever stands sponsor for the Huns' 'ruthless' submarine war. That signal refers to a U-boat, not to any of the craft playing in our little game." He paused for a moment as a detonation of terrific force rumbled distantly, and a shock like that of a blow from a mighty wave shook the ship from bow to stern, and then resumed with a grim smile: "But if that charge came anywhere near her, by this time she probably represents—well, a tired lily folding up and going to sleep for the night would probably be about as near it as anything in Nature."

Eight or ten times, with short intervals between, those thunderous under-sea detonations—each followed by its own shuddering jar—came over and through the water to us. Whitish perpendicular bars, dimly guessed in the mist, revealed what might have been high-tossed foam-geysers four or five miles away, but it was almost inconceivable that explosions at that distance could reach us with such staggering force. Indeed, I have since talked with officers from a number of different squadrons—seasoned veterans of many big gun battles, all of them—who, experiencing the shocks from 'tween decks, felt certain that their own ships had been mined or torpedoed.

While the muffled booms of the depth-charges were still sounding we saw one of the "enemy" ships—apparently a battleship of the "Queen Elizabeth" class—which had been manoeuvring for a position from which she could deliver an effective "broadside" at us, suddenly alter course eight points to port and head directly away at right angles to our extended line. As the raking this would have exposed her to was about the last thing in the world she would have risked had she been still playing the "make believe" battle, it hardly needed the far-borne and faint but still unmistakable shriek of a syren to tell us there was another game afoot. Presently she altered back to her original course, and all we ever heard of what happened was a signal, received shortly afterwards, saying that the Valiant had attempted to ram the periscope of a hostile submarine.

From first to last this little by-play had taken but a very few minutes, and, absorbed in the drama being played out on the fringes of the mist curtain, I quite neglected to take account of what was going on in our immediate vicinity. When I looked again the disposition of the units of the Grand Fleet—both battleships and screening destroyers—had completely altered. The battle formation had melted as by magic into one which offered the maximum of protection against submarine attack. Shortly we went down to lunch, where the only allusion I recall being made to the episode was something Admiral Sturdee said about how discouraging it must have been to the U-boat skipper to bob up right in the middle of the Grand Fleet, and then not have an opportunity to fire a single torpedo. In the afternoon we crept upon the "skeleton" fleet of the "enemy" in the mist and gave it the trouncing the U-boats were responsible for our failing to complete in the morning. The next day the Grand Fleet was lying quietly at its anchorage.