stiffly, with many flags: 'When ships have any doubt about signal, officers should reply: Not understood!' The Terrible, more politely than ever: 'Your signal perfectly understood,' meaning thereby, 'My friend, you made a mistake, and you jolly well know it.' We small craft stood back and sniggered while this chaff flew between the two mammoths. The thing must have weighed on the Powerful's mind, for late that evening, as we were going home, she woke up and began talking about it in flashes from the mast-head, to the effect that when signals were obviously wrong ships should do something or other laid down in the Regulations.
ASTONISHING THE CROWDED CHANNEL TRAFFIC
But really it made no difference. The missing cruiser cast up presently with one funnel blistered and a windsail rigged aft, which gave her a false air of being hurried and hot; and home we cruisers all went to Portland, past the Wolf and the toothed edges of the Scillies, astonishing the crowded Channel traffic—sometimes a Jersey potato-ketch full of curiosity; or a full-rigged trader of the deep sea, bound for one or other of the Capes; a Norwegian, Dane, German, or Frenchman; and now and again a white-sided, brass bejewelled yacht.
For a few minutes every funnel was in line. Then one saw the Powerful pulling out for a sailing ship, and blotting half the horizon with her hull. Then a second-class cruiser would flicker from the line to starboard, all spangled with her mast-head, her speed, helm, and sailing-lights as the pale glimmer of a
