LANDING PARTIES
Another signal (see Note IV.) will turn out, transport, land, embark, and disembark three thousand armed men, with twenty-one field guns, in the inside of three hours; leaving six thousand men in the ships to carry on if necessary the work of a bombardment; or you can vary the programme and load a mere thousand or so into eight identical double-funnelled fifteen-knot steam launches—one from each battleship—and play miniature Fleet-manœuvres to your heart's content. They are as used to performing evolutions together as are their big parents. They can tow half-a-dozen cutters a-piece and work in four feet of water. As an experiment you can land your twenty-one-field guns with sufficient men to throw up earthworks round them; or you can yoke men to the guns and drag them up the flanks of mountains. Or, as in mining operations, you can turn loose all hell with a string to it—pay it out and swiftly drag it back again. One never wearies of watching the outrush and influx of the landing parties; the swift flight of the boats; the minute's check at the beach; the torrents of blue and red pouring over the bows; and the loose-knit line of mingled red and blue winding away inland among the boulders and heather.
Long practice so perfectly conceals Art that the thing presents no points of the picturesque; makes no noise; calls for no more comment than the set of the waves before a prevailing wind. Only when you go over certain MS. books, giving the name, station,
