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v just on the engine-room hatch. Sound place that. It mixes up the engines.'

'Mahan says, somewhere, that broadside fighting is going to pay with our low freeboards, because most shots go wrong in elevation. Of course, broadside-on, a shell that misses you misses you clean. It don't go hopping along your upper works as it would if you were end-on.'

'Oh, I meant my shot for an end-on shot, of course,' says Twenty-one; and some one promptly sits on him.

'No-o,' says Twenty-Four, meditatively. 'What we really want if we ever go into a row is weather—lots of it. Good old gales—regular smellers. Then we could run in and beak 'em while it's thick. I believe in beaking.' (That belief, by the way, is curiously general in the Navy.)

'D'you mean to say you'd ram with a tea-tray like ours? I'm glad you aren't the skipper,' I interrupt.

'Oh, he'd beak like a shot, if he saw his chance. Of course, he wouldn't beak anything our size—it 'ud be cheaper to hammer her—but take the (he named a ship that does not fly Our flag). If you got in on her almost anywhere she'd turn turtle. And she cost about a million and a quarter. It's just a question of L.S.D.'

'And what 'ud we do afterwards, please?'

'Ah, that's our strong point. What happened when that collier drifted down on us at Milford?