It was difficult to think that they were not attached to some taut, moving cable under water.  How could such apparently unwieldy monsters, in such a slippery element as the sea, be made to obey their masters with such fine precision?

The answer again is sheer hard work!  Drills as arduous in the engine-room as at the guns; machinery kept in tune; traditions in manoeuvring in all weathers, which is kept up with tireless practice.

Though all seemed perfection to the lay eye, let it be repeated that this was not so to the eyes of admirals.  It never can be.  Perfection is the thing striven for.  Officers dwell on faults; all are critics.  Thus you have the healthiest kind of spirit, which means that there will be no cessation in the striving.

“Look at that!” exclaimed an officer on the destroyer.  “They ought to try another painting on her and see if they can’t do better.”

Ever changing that northern light.  For an instant the sun’s rays, strained by a patch of peculiar cloud, playing on a Dreadnought’s side, made her colour appear molten, exaggerating her size till she seemed as colossal to the eye as to the thought.

“But look, now!” said another officer.  She was out of the patch and seemed miles farther away to the vision, a dim shape in the sea-haze.

“You can’t have it right for every atmospheric mood of the North Sea, I suppose!” muttered the critic.  Still, it hurt his professional pride that a battleship should show up as such a glaring target even for a moment.

The power of the fleet was more patent in movement than at rest; for the sea-lion was out of his lair on the hunt.  Fluttering with flags at a review at Spithead, the battleships seemed out of their element; giants trying for a fairy’s part.  Display is not for them.  It ill becomes them, as does a pink ribbon on a bulldog.

Irresistibly ploughing their way they presented a picture of resolute utility—­guns and turrets and speed.  No spot of bright colour was visible on board.  The crew was at the guns, I took it.  Turn the turrets, give the range, lay the sights on the enemy’s ships, and the battle was on.

“There is the old Dreadnought,” said an officer.  The old Dreadnought —­all of ten years of age, the senile old thing!  What a mystery she was when she was building!  The mystery accentuated her celebrity—­and almost forgotten now, while the Queen Elizabeth and the Warspite, and others of their class with their fifteen-inch guns, would be in the public eye as the latest type till a new type came.  A parade of naval types was passing.  One seemed to shade into the other in harmonious effect.  But here was an outsider, whom one noted instantly as he studied those rugged silhouettes of steel.  She had twelve twelve-inch guns, with turret piled on turret in an exotic fashion—­one of the two Turkish battleships building in England at the time of the war and taken over by the British.