Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose cheeriness even when wounded kept up the spirits of the others on the relief expedition of Boxer days.  “He could do it, too!” one thought, having in mind Sir David Beatty’s leap to the deck of a destroyer.  Spare, of medium height, ruddy, and fifty-seven—­so much for the health qualification which the Admiralty Lords dwelt upon as important.  After he had been at sea for a year he seemed a human machine, much of the type of the destroyer as a steel machine—­a thirty-knot human machine, capable of three hundred or five hundred revolutions, engines running smoothly, with no waste energy, slipping over the waves and cutting through them; a quick man, quick of movement, quick of comprehension and observation, of speech and of thought, with a delightful self-possession—­for there are many kinds—­which is instantly responsive with decision.

A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his guests.  You liked that.  He keeps watch over the fleet himself when he is on the quarter-deck.  You had a feeling that nothing could happen in all his range of vision, stretching down the “avenues of Dreadnoughts” to the light-cruiser squadron, and escape his attention.  It hardly seems possible that he was ever bored.  Everything around interests him.  Energy he has, electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to command the greatest war product of modern energy.

Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his quarters was a new broom which South Africa had sent him.  He was highly pleased with the present; only the broom was Tromp’s emblem, while Blake’s had been the whip.  Possibly the South African Dutchmen, now fighting on England’s side, knew that he already had the whip and they wanted him to have the Dutch broom, too.

He had been using both, and many other devices in his campaign against von Tirpitz’s “unter See” boats, as was illustrated by one of the maps hung in his cabin.  Quite different this from maps in a general’s headquarters, with the front trenches and support and reserve trenches and the gun-positions marked in vari-coloured pencillings.  Instantly a submarine was sighted anywhere, Sir John had word of it, and a dot went down on the spot where it had been seen.  In places the sea looked like a pepper-box cover.  Dots were plentiful outside the harbour where we were; but well outside, like flies around sugar which they could not reach.

Seeing Sir John among his admirals and guests one had a glimpse of the life of a sort of mysterious, busy brotherhood.  I was still searching for an admiral with white hair.  If there were none among these seniors, then all must be on shore.  Spirit, I think, that is the word; the spirit of youth, of corps, of service, of the sea, of a ready, buoyant definiteness—­yes, spirit was the word to characterize these leaders.  Sir John moved from one to another in his quick way, asking a question, listening, giving a direction, his face smiling and expressive with a sort of infectious confidence.