UNUSUAL and attractive as an extended cruise on a warship from the Atlantic to the Pacific is to a civilian, and however it may cause him to be envied by his acquaintances, it must also be set down, if one would chronicle the truth and nothing else, that it has its drawbacks. Probably the first that the supernumerary cargo discovers is that there is practically no place on the decks where he may sit down. He soon realizes that a warship is not a passenger steamship, with steamer chairs, smoking rooms, deck stewards and all the other appurtenances that go to advance the traveller's comfort.

The next drawback that forces itself upon one's attention, after the novelty of looking around wears off to some extent, is that the warship passenger is a mighty lonely person, and, unless he can amuse himself or is naturally one of the reserved kind and lives in his own shell he'll find time hanging heavy on his hands.

You see you can't go up to an officer and gossip when he's drilling a crew in loading shells in a gun. You can't pounce upon the Captain whenever you see him on the deck and make him chat to you. You can't exercise conversational powers when general quarters or fire drill is on. You don't feel like asking for what is called a gabfest when the other fellow is figuring out problems in navigation. It is not the time to be chummy when every man on the bridge is watching signals from a flagship and hurrying things so as not to be the last to send up the proper pennant or to haul it down. When the red and white lights of the ardois signal system are flashing at night or the stiff arms of the semaphores are throwing themselves about in a helter-skelter fashion day or night it is not wise to ask what they are saying.

There is so much going on entirely foreign to the average man that he feels as if he were in a new world with busy people all about him speaking a strange language and doing strange things and he's literally alone. Gradually it is borne in on him that he's a cat in a strange garret. There's plenty of civility all around, but for hours and hours a day there is no companionship; no one with whom he can form a pool on the day's run, or sit down with a steward at his elbow to play a friendly game, or one for blood; no yarn spinners handy when you want 'em; no luxuries in travelling.

Of course one may find easy chairs in the wardroom with plenty of reading matter, and you have a chair and a desk, in addition to your bunk, in your room, but no one can stay below at sea unless the weather is foul, and even then he chafes at it. No matter how fine your house is at home you take more comfort in seasonable weather in sitting on your porch than in your library, and the same holds true at sea on a warship when it comes to sitting in an easy chair in the wardroom or in your own room.

There are excellent reasons for these two drawbacks, the lack of creature comforts, luxuries, if you please, and of genial companionship at any hour, in going to sea as a civilian on a warship. Only one need be mentioned. That is that a warship is a tremendously busy workshop where the boss, his assistants and the workmen have a peculiar kind of work on hand, such as exists nowhere else in the world, and there is no time in which to pander to the whims and desires of an outsider sent on board by the order of executive authorities higher up.

The work on hand is to move a floating fort of steel swiftly through the water in complete synchronism with a lot of other floating forts and then to prepare those who are engaged in work in this fort for just one thing, to destroy and kill. Everything is subservient to one idea—to be ready to fight at the swiftest pace for just about one hour; for be it known that if one of the warships in this great battle fleet were fought at its swiftest and fullest capacity it would be all over, one way or the other, in an hour or less. You see fighting a warship is not a long distance race; it's a hundred yard dash, to change the figure. Getting ready for that dash, that supreme effort at the fastest speed, calls for all the concentration and hard, unremitting toil that years of education in a complex specialty and years of experience can employ.

When this work is going on those engaged in it want outsiders out of the way, and if you're a wise outsider you want to get out of the way. Hence at such times it is likely that you'll get pretty tired standing around on your feet, with no place to rest your weary bones and no companion with whom you can even be bromidic. Yes, it's fine and great to cruise 14,000 miles on a splendid warship, but truly it has some drawbacks.

It must not be inferred from this that one lacks for comfort, complete comfort, or for genial companionship on a battleship. Far from it. The ship abounds in reading matter. There are easy chairs in plenty in the wardroom. And as for companionship, a more genial set of good fellows never existed in any profession than these same busy naval officers, from the Captains down. There are many diversions. You can watch the drills, the signalling; you can have a game of cribbage or whist in the evening; you have a fine band to play for you at dinner and on deck in the warm evenings; you can make friends with the pets on board, tease the dog, play with the cats, watch the monkeys, talk with the poll parrots and stroke the goat's head, all the time watching lest he tries to butt you, you can figure out the course, estimate latitude and longitude; you can talk with the men when the smoking lamp is lighted, although you must never be chummy, but sometimes you can get an old quartermaster who has been all over the world and draw him off into a secluded place and let him spin his yarns to you, and also let him growl out his growls and try to convince you that everything in this world, especially in the navy, is rotten, after which he feels better and you have had a pleasant hour of amusement, knowing full well that when he gets to port and meets another quartermaster of another navy he'll be blowing himself hoarse in his contention that our navy is the best in the world and that there's no calling equal to that of a real sailorman, and he's ready to fight to prove it.

So it isn't all work and no play on a warship, but it comes mighty near to it for days and days, for, like a woman's work the work is never done. You'd realize it if some night after a hard day's work is over you heard the bells and bugles crying out for general quarters for you to tumble out of your hammock or bunk when you had earned a good night's rest. You'd realize it if you had been straining your eyes for hours in the daylight at target practice and then had to go at it again at night. You know you may have to fight at night and you've got to be ready for it. There's no other way to prepare for it than by work at night.

It's all a matter of course, part of the day's work, with these sea dogs and gun fighters. And when you suggest that you are thinking of writing a piece for the paper telling about the routine on a warship they are surprised that any such topic could be interesting and tell you that it's nothing new and is going on all the time just as it has been going on for decades and centuries. Then they'll admit perhaps that the general public doesn't realize the amount of work that is done on a warship and they'll produce this schedule of hours and tasks that sums it up:

There is a daily port routine, similar in general outline to the one for cruising. It calls for the ceremony of colors, hoisting or lowering the flag, boat duty and other things which can come only when a ship is in port. But these two schedules only hint at the full story. Probably the first impression that a stranger to all this ship routine gets is that a warship is one of the most discordant places in the world. They are everlastingly blowing bugles, each bugle out of key with all the others. One bugler will sound a lot of hippety-hoppity notes and then another will take up the same refrain with a blare and a mean half note or quarter note variation and then two or three others will join in, on decks, below decks, and the jangling jumble rolls in on your ear drums in such a discord that you feel as if you'd like to punch the man who told 'em to do it. At the same time you see men, hundreds of whom must have no ear for note discrimination, jump to the tasks to which they are summoned and you wonder how they know what the bugles are telling them.

There are ninety-eight of these bugle calls on a man-o'-war and how the men differentiate them passes your understanding. It aggravates you that you can't make them out yourself. You begin to study them and you do get so that you are able to recognize two or three, and then you get lost and you begin to have an admiration for the men who have mastered them all, just as you admire an ironworker who can walk a beam 400 feet in the air. He can do something that you can't do and you respect him for it.

Still you keep trying to master those calls. Finally you learn the trick partly. You associate certain words with certain jingles—perhaps it would be better to say certain jangles—and then you pat yourself on the back and feel that you are pretty nearly half as good as a sailorman in Uncle Sam's navy. The trick is the same as with the army calls and many of the jingles are the same. For example, you soon learn reveillÉ, for the refrain,

fits the call so completely that one who has once learned it can never forget what it means.

Again when the bugles sound the sick bay call you find yourself unconsciously saying to yourself:

When the officers' call for quarters is sounded you feel like saying to the one nearest you:

When the mess call is blown you know that the bluejackets are saying to themselves as the notes blare out:

When assembly sounds you join with the rest in the warning:

When the swimming call comes you say to yourself:

When the call for pay day is made you know how the men feel as they say:

And when tattoo is over and then comes taps you feel drowsy as the sweet notes, one of the very few in army or navy calls that are sweet, sing to you:

Oh, yes, you finally get to know many of these calls and then somehow the discord seems to leave them, and, like the ship that found herself, you begin to find yourself on shipboard and you feel that you are getting on. That bugling ceases to trouble you further.

The pipes of the bos'n also pierce your ears. Always shrill, they all seem to end in a piercing shriek. At first they make you grate your teeth. You feel as if you would prefer that some one would cuss you out, as the naval expression is, rather than give you orders in that mean way. And when you hear these same mates, one of whom is stationed at every place of importance where the men live and sleep, roar out something that seems to be a mixture of the blast of a cyclone, the trumpeting of an elephant and the bray of another animal you think that if you were the sailorman addressed you'd feel like saying to that mate you'd be damned if you'd do it, whatever it was he was ordering you to do. Why, such language as the bos'ns' pipes employ is more calculated to inspire profanity than was the term applied by Daniel O'Connell to the fishwoman when he called her out of her name by saying she was a hypothenuse. But gradually you learn some of these calls too—there are no rhymes or jingles for them—and that worry blows over.

The work on the bridge also soon excites your admiration. When you are in squadron or fleet formation it's a different game from when you are alone. Then all you have to do is to keep your course and go sailing along at the speed set for you, keep your eye on things, receive reports, give this and that order, when you are through set down a record of what has happened in the deck logbook. All that's simple and easy compared with cruising in a fleet. With a fleet you are not on the bridge five minutes before you are aware that a peculiar kind of game is being played. It is "Watch the Flagship." The watch officer, the signal officer, the quartermasters, the signal boys, are all engaged in the work. Let a signal go up from the flagship. There is a hasty peep through glasses and then a hoarse cry for certain flags, a rush for the bunting, a quick bending of it on the halyards and then a mad rush by half a dozen lads across the bridge as the signals are hoisted. Hurry; be the first to answer, is the sentiment inspiring all. After the signal is hoisted you take a hasty look around, and you grin as this or that ship hasn't got hers up yet, and you say to yourself that it was pretty smart work. When the first sign of a flutter comes from the flagship that the pennants are coming down the hoarse yell of "Haul down!" comes like a thunderclap; and woe betide the clumsy signal boy who gets the halyards foul and doesn't have the signals out of sight before the flagship has hers hidden.

Or perhaps it is approaching sunset and the time comes to lower the speed cones for the night and start the masthead and truck lights to glimmering. Intently all hands watch the flagship and at the first tremor of the cone the boy begins to haul down. In a jiffy not a cone is to be seen at the yards on the entire fleet.

Then there is the night signalling with the ardois red and white lights. There flashes from the flagship a row of vertical red lights, four of them. "Cornet!" is the cry. It means that each ship must turn on the same signal as an answer to attention call. Then the flagship talks, with this and that combination of red and white lights, all flashed so fast that before the impression of one combination fades from the eye two or three others have followed and you wonder how on earth any one can make them out. But as each one is flashed a boy calls out the letter and another writes it down the cubbyhole where the navigator's chart is sheltered, and you find that these messages are recorded as fast as a telegrapher could write out his clicks.

Then the semaphore is lighted up and the arms of lights go jiggering this way and that way, just as the gaunt black and white automata do in the daytime, and you find the boys reading off the message as easily as a grown person can spell cat when the letters are big and the print is plain. You sometimes wake up in the night when you are at anchor and look out of your port. Rare is it that you do not see a semaphore or an ardois combination flashing. When you ask about it in the morning the officers will tell you that it probably was the signal boys talking with one another and that it is allowed because it is good practice to let them gossip when there is nothing else going on and the night watches are long and tedious. Invariably one boy will make the signal letter of another ship where he suspects a friend is on duty at the signals and this is what he says:

"How is it for a game of flat?" meaning an unofficial talk.

"All right," comes the answer: "go ahead."

Then those two boys chat over all sorts of things, chaff each other, make appointments for the first liberty, talk of the latest ship gossip, and all that, but there's one feature about it that's peculiar. The messages are always in polite form. It's always, "Will you kindly?" or "Please be good enough," or something in that fashion. No signal boy ever forgets himself or the dignity of his place in a game of talk. Besides, there might be officers observing things and it is never nice to have your name put on the report. You are brought up at the mast and you might get five days in the brig on bread and water or something like that if you exchanged language that was not seemly for use on a warship's signals.

And then in bridge work in cruising there is that difficult job of keeping distances. The favorite cruising formation in this fleet is at 400 yards distance from the preceding ship. The Louisiana was fourth in whatever line was formed. That meant 1,200 yards from the flagship. Now the engines of no two ships move the 16,000 tons of those ships at exactly the same speed through the water. You may know theoretically how many revolutions of the propellers are needed to go at the rate of ten, eleven, twelve or even more knots an hour, but even then one ship will inch up, so to speak, foot up might express it better, and you have got to correct this all the time or you will be crawling up on the quarter deck of the ship in front of you, or lagging so behind that the ship after you will be in danger of crawling up on your own deck.

You have a midshipman using the stadimeter all the time, every fifteen or twenty seconds or so, and then you are kept signalling to the engine room to make one or two or three revolutions faster or slower, until you get your right place and you don't have to fly your position pennant, confessing to the flagship that you are making a bad job of your work and have got more than forty yards out of your position. You see, coal varies in its steaming qualities from time to time, and sometimes the engine room force gets a little slack or orders get mixed and it is one perpetual struggle to keep exactly where you ought to be.

Then you have to sail on the course announced, and the helmsman and quartermaster have to be continually moving the rudder back and forth to correct the yaws from the seas and other influences that throw you off that exact line.

Then there is the routine bridge work, giving orders, receiving reports, making decisions, tasting the food of the crew that is brought always to the officer on watch, sighting ships and other things and always notifying the Captain day or night of all important things going on. Oh, yes, there is plenty to do on a bridge in a fleet, and you watch its progress with fascination for hours until you suddenly begin to realize the presence of that drawback mentioned first in this article, that there is no seating place up there, and you go below to read or get some rest sitting down.

As one becomes accustomed to the naval routine there are some ceremonies that he skips as a matter of course and some that he does not. One of the latter is the general muster of the officers and crew on a Sunday morning once a month. Quarters are sounded as usual and then comes the inspection of the ship and the men in their stations, while the band is playing lively airs. When this is over the entire ship's company not engaged in actual duty in running the ship is summoned aft. The officers and their divisions come to the quarter deck, and each officer reports his division "up and aft" to the executive officer, who in turn reports that fact to the Captain. The latter then orders the ship's roll to be called. The paymaster steps out from the group of officers with the roll. On the Louisiana he calls:

"Richard Wainwright!"

Capt. Wainwright responds:

"Captain, United States Navy."

"E. W. Eberle!"

"Lieutenant-Commander, United States Navy," the executive officer responds.

"C. T. Jewell!"

"Lieutenant-Commander, United States Navy," says the navigator, and so on down the roll of officers the Paymaster proceeds, each man saluting as he answers to his name. Then the Paymaster retires and the pay clerk steps up and takes up the call. He reads the names of the members of the crew. As each man hears his name called he answers with his designation on the roll, John Jones will answer "Coal passer, United States Navy," and William Smith will declare that he is an ordinary seaman, and so on. As each man answers to his name he drops out of the ranks, proceeds aft and walks by the Captain, hat in hand. When the name of a man on duty somewhere in this ship, in the engine rooms or the bridge or elsewhere, is called, the ship's writer, who stands beside the executive officer, says.

"On duty, sir."

The absentee is marked "accounted for." Men in the sick bay are accounted for in the same way. It requires almost an hour to go through the nearly 1,000 names, and when it is all over the Paymaster reports to the executive officer that all are present or accounted for and that fact is duly communicated to the Captain. By that time the deck is clear of the men and only the officers remain, and these are dismissed.

It's a fine thing to see a fine crew individually and size up each man. When the President was on the Louisiana it is said that he took the keenest interest in this personal appearance of every man on the quarter deck in answer to the call of his name and showed his satisfaction over the appearance of the men as he stood beside the Captain and watched each one of the husky lads pass by.

Once a month on a Sunday morning the crew is also summoned aft to have the Articles of War read. The executive officer does the reading. Here is propounded the law and the gospel of a man-o'-war's duties and responsibilities. The men are told what they must do and what they must not do. The punishments inflicted for certain offences are read out, offences in time of peace and similar offences in time of war. More than once are heard the words "shall suffer death." All through the idea pervades that there must be instant and complete obedience of orders. Reading the Articles of War constitutes a solemn occasion and when it is finished one realizes as never before what a serious thing it is to swear allegiance to Uncle Sam as part of his naval force.

The organization of the ship's force soon becomes well fixed in the mind. There is one head to it all, the Captain, on whom falls final responsibility for everything, discipline, safety of ship and men, work of every kind. He is assisted by about twenty-five commissioned subordinate officers and midshipmen and nearly a dozen warrant officers, besides numerous petty officers and their mates. The ship has several large departments just as a big store in the city. The executive officer is the right hand man, the general manager, if you please, of the ship, and he sees that the Captain's orders are carried out and he also keeps the vessel shipshape.

One of the departments is that of the navigator. Another is the department of ordnance. A third is that of the engineer, a fourth that of the medical officer, a fifth that of the Paymaster and a sixth has to do with the Marine Corps.

The executive officer not only runs almost everything on the ship but is in charge of all equipment and stores. He is the man who can do most to make a ship happy or hellish. He looks after the daily routine, drills, repairs, cleaning up, issuing of stores, and the like. He is the man to whom all other officers, big and little, report. He is busy from early morning until late at night. When he isn't keeping things in order he is writing reports. He almost never has time to sit down at ease except at the head of the wardroom table at meal time, where he is a sort of social arbiter, as well as general manager.

The executive officer is also the housekeeper of the vessel. At one time he is in consultation with the bandmaster over a music programme and then he is consulting with a plumber about a drain. He runs the clothing establishment and varies that work with looking after the hoisting of ashes or the arranging of liberty parties. His work has no beginning and no end and a faithful and hard working man seldom has time to write to his family, to say nothing of reading a book occasionally or stealing away to his room for a quiet smoke or a siesta.

The navigator does the navigating, as might be expected. He relieves the officer on watch on the bridge when quarters are sounded. He has charge of all the electrical apparatus, and he is also instructor in navigation to the young midshipmen, who have to keep up their study and work along that line.

The ordnance officer has charge of the guns, ammunition, the work of target practice, the making of targets and everything that pertains to shooting. The Paymaster has charge of all money matters, payment of wages, the purchase of supplies, providing clothing and meals for the crew. He is the purser of the ship. The medical officer besides caring for the sick is responsible for sanitary conditions.

In addition to these commissioned officers there are Lieutenants and Ensigns who are watch officers; that is, they stand the watch of four hours on the bridge at sea, representing the Captain in seeing that the ship goes all right, and four hours on the after deck in port, where they direct and have charge of all that is going on.

There is besides the engineering division, which is a sort of world all to itself.

Then there are the warrant officers, the boatswain, gunner, electrical gunner, carpenter and machinists. They are what might be called the general foremen or superintendents. They are assisted by the petty officers, of whom there are three grades, and mates of various kinds, who are the foremen of the individual gangs of men in their work about ship. Pretty soon one begins to learn the signs and marks upon sleeves and other devices that tell the grade of this man and that. He also learns about seamen, ordinary seamen, yeomen (the clerks of each department), coxswains, jacks-o-the-dust, lamplighters, gun pointers, hospital attendants, shipwrights, the printer and the numerous other classifications into which the crew is divided.

He learns that the crew is split up into various divisions and each division into various sections. The officers are called division officers when the responsibility for handling the men by divisions comes up. Then the passenger also learns how the entire crew is split up into watches so that some of the men are on deck and other duty at every hour of the day and night. He soon learns all about the hammock netting, where the hammocks of the men are stowed, and he can even find the places where the ditty boxes of the men are kept when not in use. He knows what things are in those little square ditty boxes, writing paper, photographs of those at home, mending material, brushes, blacking, possessions of every kind, all subject to inspection by the officers.

Having mastered something of the personnel of the ship it is surprising how soon one falls into the drill routine. This is a more or less delicate subject about which to write, for the reason that tactical matters and certain drills the details of which are kept secret are not proper subjects for publication, and all correspondents with the fleet have bound themselves by written pledge never to reveal what they may learn about them. There are certain drills, however, which are common to all navies and a matter of ordinary routine, in reference to which there is no inhibition, inasmuch as the Navy Department has even authorized and approved publication of these details. You will find them all written out in the book "The American Battleship in Commission," written by an enlisted man.

On certain mornings of the week certain drills are always gone through with. You know when it is ordinary quarters, when fire, collision and abandon ship practice is to be gone through with, when certain kinds of gun practice are tried out. You know just how often this and that division goes through with "pingpong" shooting, the work with what are known as Morris tubes, the kind of shooting that has superseded to a large extent the former sub-calibre practice on shipboard.

You then learn all about hammock and bag inspection days, you even get to know when the flagship will probably order hammocks or bags scrubbed and you get to know just about how often the clotheslines will be strung up over the fo'c'stle and just how often bedding will be hung on the rails for airing and when it will be taken in and all that. You get used to seeing the lanterns put in the lifeboats at night for emergency use. You know that every half hour when the ship's bell is struck the sentry on the quarter deck will turn toward the after bridge and will sing out:

"Life buoys, aft; all's well!"

You know that up on the forward bridge with every "bell" the port and starboard side lights will be reported burning in the same manner. You know how often the marine guard is changed and what the stations are. You know that on Saturday morning there will be no quarters and that all hands will be set to cleaning the decks with sand and holystones and that the mud, if a combination of sand and water can be called mud, will be so thick that for nearly all the morning you will have to wear rubbers if you want to get about in comfort. You know when bright work will be cleaned and you know when the smoking lamp will be lighted, which means at just what hours smoking will be permitted, for there is no real lamp in these days when nearly everything on a warship is run by electricity.

You get to know just when the awkward squad of marines will be drilled and you know when the patent log, which is watched most carefully and which nearly everybody scoffs at because one never can depend much upon it, will be read. You know soon from the color of the water when you are on soundings, and you gather about the little contrivance far back on the quarter deck which unreels the wire for the lead that goes swishing hundreds of fathoms into the sea and finally brings up on the bottom and then records the depth. You gather about the chief quartermaster as he has the line pulled in and you look with him at the thermometerlike arrangement which by discoloration shows the depth of the water. You know just how often the temperature of the sea will be taken and how often the temperature of the air will be recorded in the log and the height of the barometer set down.

And then perhaps your mind turns again to the housekeeping of this home of 1,000 men. You visit the cook's galley, where the head cook and several assistants are busy night and day preparing the meals for the men with redhot stoves and great caldrons. You see the copper coffee and tea tanks, the soup tanks, the bean tanks and the rest. You see the electrically operated potato paring machine, just like the one used in the model kitchen of the world at West Point. You visit the butcher's shop, where about 2,000 pounds of meat is served out and cut up each day.

Then you go to the scullery and see the dishwashing machines, also copied from those in use at West Point and all large hotels. You visit the bake shop with its intense heat and the bake rooms store shop where the loaves of bread are piled up like so many cords of wood. You go to the sick bay and see a hospital in operation comparable favorably in every way with the best appointed hospital on land. You visit the operating room with its fullest set of surgical appliances. You even go to the brig and you see where men can be confined in cells or left out in the open so that they may have company and simply be restrained, the latter being the prevalent form for light punishments. You may attend the "mast," where the Captain every day holds his police court for light offences, and you may read in the log what has been done in each case. You may attend the summary courts-martial, where more or less serious cases are tried by a board of officers, but you must leave the room when the board goes into executive session to form its judgment on the case and fix the penalty if the accused is found guilty.

You may see the tests of powder and guncotton at regular intervals, and if you wish to go around at night with the carpenter's force you may see them making soundings of the hold every hour. You may see the tests of electrical machinery and you may watch the operation of closing all watertight doors every evening at 5 o'clock, and always in going in or out of port or in time of fog. You can even solve that mystery to every civilian as to why there is a sailmaker, with assistants, on a craft that carries no sail. When you find men working over canvas targets for days and days, making awnings and windsails, working at hammocks and the like, and when you realize that the ship carries more cordage than the old Constitution, you understand it all. The work of the sailmaker is no cinch. You can see the men once a month paid off in long lines, each man's signature attested by the division officer.

So you wander about hither and thither without any well developed plan and run across this and that form of employment and hard daily toil and you wonder how it can be, with so much to do and so little time in which to do it, that proficiency in any one line of work can be secured. Familiarity with it, however, shows that such a condition is approximated, and you begin to feel absolutely confident that if the ship ever did get into a scrap all this work and drill would show its effects at once in a way that would make you proud of the men and the ships of the navy. A sense of confident security comes over you and you soon have the feeling that nobody in the world can beat the Yankee sailor man for man in fighting and no ship of equal capacity in the world can beat the one on which you are sailing in a fight. You may be overconfident, but it's a comfortable kind of feeling to have.

You watch the rivalry among the various ships of the fleet in such matters as they can show rivalry in during a cruise as you begin to have confidence in the one on which you are a passenger. When target shooting comes this rivalry will take an impressive form. At present the rivalry consists largely in keeping distances, in making turns accurately, in making and responding to signals. Every morning you watch the flags go up at 10 o'clock, when the signals are hoisted on the second recording the number of sick and absentees on each ship. The officers and men read these flags off quick as a flash and you speculate about the condition of things on this and that vessel.

At 11:20 in the morning you watch the flags go up to catch the change of time for all clocks. At noon every one is keen to see the flags sent up telling how much coal has been used and how much each ship has on hand. Then come the flags which give the reckoning of the navigator on each ship as to latitude and longitude, either by observation or dead reckoning, and you comment upon the variations in the reports.

So the routine goes on and you get used to it and in some respects become part of it. You even fall into a certain station at certain times. The Sun man, for example, has one place where he is expected to report when the call is made. No other duties are assigned to him as a passenger. He has a certain station when the abandon ship drill takes place. He goes to his station, reports and then is excused. Otherwise he is free to do pretty much as he pleases, always observing as well as he can the little proprieties on shipboard, which are simply those governing the ordinary actions of gentlemen.

Every man on a warship has his little or big place that is his own and you must not cross its confines without permission. For instance, the starboard side of the quarter deck is the Captain's. You don't walk there unless he indicates that he would like to have you join him. The port side of the deck belongs to the other officers. The Captain almost never goes there, although, being the Captain, he can go where he pleases. Each officer's room is sacred when the curtain is drawn. And so on through the ship there is a little piece of territory sacred to each man or set of men. The fo'c'stle deck is the men's.

Launch etiquette, however, is peculiar. One of the first things to learn about travelling in a naval launch is that it is a little ship of itself. You salute its deck, so to speak, when you enter it if you observe the niceties. The highest ranking officer sits in the stern and goes into the boat last. All the others stand until he seats himself. He is the first to leave and the others go in the order of their rank. You mustn't smoke in a launch in the daytime, and if you do so on the sly you must be sure not to show your cigar in passing the flagship, for the quartermaster on watch on the after bridge will report you and there'll be trouble. You mustn't smoke at night except by permission of the ranking officer on board. If you see him light a cigar or cigarette all the rest of you may do so. Otherwise you will please throw away your cigar or cigarette when you enter the boat.

As you go out to your ship at night you hear the quartermaster on some other ship call out, "Boat ahoy!" and the coxswain of your boat answers with a yell, "Passing!" When you approach your ship or another to make a stop the coxswain must be particular about his answers to the boat ahoy call. If he has the President of the United States aboard, as coxswains on the Louisiana have had repeatedly, he calls out:

"United States!"

If an Admiral is on board the answer to the hail is:

"Flag!" If a Captain is on board the answer is the name of his ship.

If other commissioned officers above the grade of midshipmen are on board the answer is "Aye! aye!" and if the launch contains only midshipmen or other officers of lower grade the answer is, "No! No!" as if to say you needn't bother about this bunch. If it has only enlisted men on board the call is "Hello!" By these answers the officer of the deck is informed as to who is approaching. Of course they are used only in the night, for in the day time observation will reveal the situation.

The longer one remains on a warship, either as a member of the crew or as a guest, two things become more and more impressive. One is the reverence for the quarter deck and the other is the patriotic regard for the national hymn, "The Star Spangled Banner." The quarter deck seems to be almost a holy place. The officers salute it as they step upon it. No stain is allowed to remain upon it. If a man for instance were found spitting upon it—well, hamstringing would be the fitting penalty, if the feelings of those outraged by the performance were consulted. This regard for the deck has come down from the earliest naval traditions. The soil of the country is represented there. The flag waves above it. Sovereignty finds expression there. It is the place of all ceremonies, the one place sacred to all that is best in tradition, rules of conduct, liberty, national achievements on the sea, national hopes and aspirations. It must never be profaned.

The sound of the first bar of the national hymn brings every naval man who hears it to attention. The mental attitude is one of intense respect as well. That anthem never becomes a bore to the officers and men. Its notes are a call to duty and the salute, when it is ended, is a public pledge of fealty to the flag. No music is played on ship more carefully and with more earnest effort to get every shade of feeling out of the notes. Reverence for the tune is a living thing, and after one has been on shipboard for a week he begins to feel ashamed of the public indifference to the tune ashore.

Let one incident reveal the regard for the hymn on shipboard. We were steaming just below the equator on the way to Rio Janeiro one evening, when showers made it impossible for the band to play on deck. The concert was held in a casemate and the humidity added great discomfort to the intense heat. The members of the crew off duty had stripped to their undershirts and trousers. The musicians had also thrown off their coats. Their faces ran with sweat as they played.

Every concert ends with "The Star Spangled Banner." It was time to play it. All the musicians stood up and the men who had crowded in to hear the music came to attention, but not one move toward lifting his baton would the bandmaster make until every one of his men had put on his coat and hat. They might play Strauss waltzes and even Wagnerian selections in their undershirts, but no note of the national hymn could be played until every man was in dress befitting the occasion. All this is nothing unusual, but it is impressive to the man who sees it for the first time.

So although there is no place for comfortable loafing and sometimes it is lonely a civilian passenger on one of these ships after all can find entertainment and other things to interest him. Day by day he feels his patriotic impulses quickened. Day by day he is more and more glad that he is an American citizen. And when taps is sounded and he knows that the men not on duty are swinging quietly in their hammocks, tired out from their work, he can understand and appreciate the full significance and beauty of the refrain which soothes one and all with its soft good-night:

"Go to sleep! Go to sleep! G-o t-o s-l-e-e-p!"