Rock of Gibraltar

The sacrifices of England were in some degree repaid by the extension of her possessions.

She retained from Spain the famous Rock of Gibraltar, Port Maoun, and the Isle of Menorca.

France surrendered Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson's Bay.

The fortifications of Dunkirk were to be dismantled.

And I can't speak for every country.

I was in Portugal, Spain, and the Rock of Gibraltar.

And I was just noticing how obesity was not a thing.

Like people were active.

Some were captured and more destroyed.

A few which had taken shelter under the Rock of Gibraltar, and were pursued thither by the enemy, were sunk when it was found that they could not be defended.

Others perished in the same manner under the batteries of Malaga.

The gain to the French seems not to have been great, but the loss to England and Holland was immense.

And strength to load pressure reads four to one.

This slope's a regular Rock of Gibraltar.

Oh, yeah, for today anyway.

[instrumental music] Skip doesn't realize how closely his remark portends tomorrow's radical weather change.

Well for him who has no fear, looking seaward, well assured, that the word the vessel brings is the word that he would hear.

anon the cruisers popped over the horizon led by the powerful all save one and the powerful wished to know where that one had gone now the rendezvous given us by the powerful could have been read in two ways we all knew how the mistake had arisen and with one exception had all repaired to the place which our leader had in her massive mind but there was no ship of course that could stand up to and gently rebuke the powerful save her sister ship the terrible who signalled politely i suppose the is waiting at rendezvous signalled by you to this the powerful 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 wee 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 masthead 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 wind-sail 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 edge of the scillies astonishing the crowded channel traffic sometimes a jersey potato catch 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 masthead her speed helm and sailing lights as the pale glimmer of a fishing smacks lantern crawled out astern of her and now it was our turn to give way that was a royal progress no blind man's bluff off the lizard or dreary game of hunt the needles such as the liners play but through the heavenly clear night the leisurely rolling slow march of the overlords of all the seas ours by right of birth and the whole thing was my very own that is to say yours mine to me by right of birth mine were the speed and power of the hulls not here only but the world over the hearts and brains and lives of the trained men such strength and such power as we and the world dare hardly guess at and holding this power in the hollow of my hand able at the word to exploit the earth to my own advantage to gather me treasure and honour as men reckon honour i and a few million friends of mine forbore because we were white men any other breed with this engine at their disposal would have used it savagely long ago in our hands it lay as harmless as the leaven rods of the virilia thus i stood astounded at my own moderation and counted up my possessions with most sinful pride the wind and the smell of it off the coasts was mine and it was telling me things it would never dream of confiding to a foreigner the short hollow channel sea was mine bought for me drop by drop every salt drop of it in the last eight hundred years as short a time as it takes to make a perfect lawn in a cathedral close the speech on the deck below was mine for the men were free white men same as me only considerably better their notions of things were my notions of things and the bulk of those notions we could convey one to the other without opening our heads things one takes for granted we had a common tradition one thousand years old of the things one takes for granted a warrant officer said something and the groups melted quietly about some job or other that same cast of man that same type of voice was speaking in the commissariat in burmah in barracks in rangoon under double awnings in the persian gulf on the rock of gibraltar wherever else you please and the same instant obedience i knew would follow on that voice and a foreigner would never have understood will never understand but i understood as you would have understood had you been there i went round to make sure of my rights as a taxpayer under schedule d saw my men in my hammock sleeping without shading their eyes four inches from the white glare of my electric heard my stokers chaffing each other at my ash chute and fetched up by a petty officer who was murmuring fragments of the riot act into my subordinate's attentive ear when he had entirely finished the task at hand he was at liberty to attend to me hope you've enjoyed your trip sir you see i knew what was coming we haven't quite shaken down yet in another three months we shall be something like no ship is ever at her best till you leave her then you hold her up as a shining example to your present craft for that is england my marine the skirmisher in south american suburbs stood under the shadow of the poop looking like a stuffed man with an automatic arm for saluting purposes but i knew him on the human side go on off to-morrow ain't you sir well there are only twenty of us ere but if you ever want to see the marines a lot of em it might perhaps be worth your while too and he gave me the address of a place where i could find plenty of marines he spoke as though his nineteen friends were no-class animals and a foreigner would have taken him at his word a commodious coffee-grinder the entire ward-room explained carefully that their commodious coffee-grinder must not be taken as a sample of the navy at its best wasn't she a good sea-boat oh yes remarkably so couldn't she go on occasion oh yes she could go but after all she wasn't a patch on certain other craft being only a third-class cruiser practically an enlarged destroyer a tin-pot of the tiniest now in my last ship the captain began that was an unlucky remark for i remembered that last ship and a certain first night aboard her in the long swell of simon's bay when the captain took heaven and earth and the admiralty to witness that of all cluttered-up boxes of machinery and bags of tricks his new command was the worst to hear him now she must have been a trifle larger than the majestic with twice the powerful speed we are a deceptive people come and see us next year when we've shaken down a bit said the ward-room and you'll like it better that last was impossible but i accepted the offer our cruiser was about to refit at some dockyard or other in a few days and i gathered that it would be no fault of the captain the wardroom or the warrant officer if she did not arrive with a list of alterations and improvements as long as her main must so it was with every new ship the dear boys take her out to see what she can do and in that process discover what she cannot do if by any arrangement or rearrangement of stay stanchion davit steam-pipe bridge boat chocks or hatchways she can in their judgment be improved rest assured that the dockyard will know it by letter and voice she never gets more than half of what she wants and so is careful to apply for thrice her needs discontented and impenitent thieves to her just and picturesque demands the yard opposes the suspicion of centuries saying unofficially you're all a set of discontented and impenitent thieves go away the ship considering her own comfort and well-being for the rest of the commission replies also unofficially ah you're thinking of the so-and-so she a nest of pirates if you like but we're good we're the most upright ship you ever clapped eyes on and you're the finest yard in the kingdom you're up to all the ropes there's no getting round you and you'll pass our indents we won't give you any trouble just a few minor repairs and our own people will carry them out don't disturb yourself in the least send the stuff alongside and we'll attend to it and when the stuff comes alongside in charge of a slow-minded understrapper they do attend to it they talk the man blind and dumb sack his cargoes and turn him adrift to study vouchers at his leisure then the first lieutenant grins like a cheshire cat the carpenter so called because he very rarely deals with wood the armourer and the first-class artificers sweat with joy and the workshop lays buzz and hum but the understrapper gets particular beans because a great part of his stuff was meant for another ship and she is very angry about it stolen paint late in the afternoon the defrauded vessel sends over a boat to the early and wants to know if she has seen or heard anything of some oak balks a new gangway grating some brass work and a few drums of white paint why was that yours says the first lieutenant we thought it was ours well it isn't it's ours where is it i'm awfully sorry but i say won't you come and have a drink they come just in time to see the brass rods in position the oak balks converted into some sort of boat furniture the gangway platform receives their weary feet and a fine flavor of paint from a flat forward tells them all they will ever know of the missing drums then they call the first lieutenant a pirate and he poor lamb says that he was misled by the chuckle-headed understrapper who brought the stuff alongside words cannot express the first lieutenant's contrition it is too bad too bad but you know what asses these dockyard chaps can be with soft words and occasional gin and bitters he coaxes the visitors into their boat again for he has studied diplomacy under west african kings they return to their own place being young and guileless and their reception is not cordial their captain says openly that he has not one adequate thief in the ship and that they had better go into the church they should have captured the understrapper early in the day he will speak to the other captain and he does like a brother next time he meets him galley passing galley going to call on the admiral you infernal old pirate what have you done with my paint cries the robbed one me sar not me sar my brother manuel sar that paint mya fish done gone finish kerech kogya this from the other potentate the coxswains duck their heads to hide a grin and that is one of the ways they have in the navy see note i the early bird departs with a reputation that would sink a slave dhow to try the same trick on hong kong or bombay yard a blissful fortnight this and more oh much more did my friends fore and apt convey to me in that blissful fortnight when i was privileged to watch their labours i heard undilutedly what a boy thinks of punishment and the man who reported him for it how a carpenter regards a dockyard matey what are the sentiments of a signaller towards an admiral and of a stoker towards the authorities who have designed his washing accommodation i overheard in the darkness of beautiful nights fragments of greek drama from the forward flats which it is my life's regret that i cannot make public lectures on all manner of curious things delivered by the ship's jester and totally unvoracious reports of conversations with superiors retailed by a delinquent marine fire and collision drill general quarters and the like take on a new meaning when they are translated for you once by the head who orders them and again by the tail who carry them out when you have been shown lovingly over a torpedo by an artificer skilled in the working of its tricky bowels torpedoes have a meaning and a reality for you to the end of your days men live there next time you see the blue ashore you do not stare unintelligently you have watched him on his native heath you know what he eats and what he says and where he sleeps and how he is no longer a unit but altogether such an one as yourself only as i have said better the naval officer chance met rather meek and self-effacing in tweeds at a tennis party is a priest of the mysteries you have seen him by his altars with the navigating lieutenant on the eye and lofty bridge persecuting his vocation you have studied stars masthead angles range finders and such all the first lieutenant has enlightened you on his duties as an upper housemaid see note one a and the juniors have guided you through the giddy whirl of gunnery small-arm drill getting up an anchor and taking kinks out of a cable so it comes that next time you see even far off one of her majesty's cruisers all your heart goes out to her men live there chapter three chapter four of a fleet in being by rudyard kipling it was the captain's coxswain see note two precise immaculate and adequate as ever who met the returning guest at devonport a year later september eighteen ninety eight this time my cruiser was not with the fleet but on urgent private affairs a misguided collier had seen fit to sit on her ram for a minute or so in milford haven a few days before and had twisted it thirteen inches to starboard the collier was beached as soon as possible and the admiral he said to us this i got from the coxswain as we drove to north corner by night through the blue-jacketed devonport can you go round to plymouth with your nose in that state lord love you yes said we or words to that effect very good said the admiral then you go this we did at an average speed of sixteen knots through a head sea with a collision mat over our nose same mat we used when we tied up the thresher sir and we ran her up to eighteen point two for a few hours to see how the bulkhead would stand it the carpenter and the carpenter's mate yes they're the same as last year sir sat up to watch but nothing happened and now we're under orders to go back and join the fleet at bantry we've been cruising all round england since august the record of a year once aboard the lugger the past twelve months rolled up like a chart that one needs no longer the commodious coffee-grinder welcomed me as a brother for by good luck no one had been changed the same faces greeted me in the little ward-room and we fell to chattering like children had i seen the new fore and aft bridge that we had managed to screw out of the dockyard a great contraption a superior contraption we had worked in a little extra deck under the fore-bridge so that now the signalman had a place to stand in which i would remember was not the case last year had i heard of our new coaling record nearly fifty tons per hour which for a third-class cruiser represented four times that amount for a battleship had i heard of the zephyr that blew at funchal of unrecorded evolutions in minorca bay of the first lieutenant's great hall of paint of a recent target practice when nothing was left of the target of the influenza that overtook the steam whistle and a hundred other vital matters the record of a year with the channel fleet was not to be told in two hours but i gathered a good deal ere i dropped into my well-remembered berth that joyous night we departed at noon the next day unhampered by signals a liner leaves plymouth in one style a cruiser snakes out from devonport in quite another which was explained to me on the i and lofty bridge as we skated round buoy after buoy courteously pulled out a little not to interfere with a yacht race and ran through the brown sailed plymouth fishing fleet it was divine weather still cloudless and blue and the bridge was of opinion that he who had a farm should sell it and forthwith go to sea our noble selves the cornwall coast slid past us in great blue-gray shadows laid out beyond the little strip of sail dotted blue but my eyes were all inboard considering our noble selves we had accumulated all sorts of small improvements since last year she had shaken into shape as a new house does when one has decided where to put the furniture the first lieutenant as usual explained that we were in no sense clean that twenty ton at least of the four hundred we had just taken in lay about the deck in dust and that it would cost a fortnight to put any appearance on her we're supposed to be burning number two welsh it's road sweepings and soot really that's on account of the welsh coal strike isn't it filthy we smoked out the whole of the fleet and the rock of gibraltar the other day But wait till you see some of the others.

They're worse.

Isn't she a puka pigsty?" from the landsman's point of view she seemed offensively clean but it is hard to please a first lieutenant ours utilized the delay at devonport to touch her up outside and the perfect weather at bantry to paint her thoroughly inside the only time he left her was to pull round her in a boat and see how she looked from various points of view then i think he was satisfied for nearly half a day rash interest in gun practice over against faumet we found the sea sufficiently empty for gun practice and went to work at two thousand six hundred yards on the little triangular canvas target all splintered and bepatched from past trials this year the three-pounders were using up some black powder ammunition and with the wind behind us we were villainously wrapped in smoke but for all that the shots were very efficiently placed on and about the tiny mark one shrapnel burst immediately above the thing and the deep was peppered with iron from above it looked like the cloud-wristed hand of a god as they draw it in the dutch picture-books dropping pebbles into a pond the more one sees of big gun practice the less one likes it but a big yacht of the r y s thought otherwise streaming down on us of a sudden with all the rash interest of a boy in next door's fireworks she thinks the target is a derelict said the bridge she's coming for salvage she'll be right in the middle of it in a minute no she won't starboard bow maxim there thirteen hundred yards the little demon set up the irritating stammer that the nine point two gun found so objectionable and spattered up the blue all about the canvas as a swizzle stick works up a cocktail our friend turned on her heel with immense promptitude and scuttled to windward later on i heard some interesting tales of craft excursion steamers for choice anchoring between a man-of-war and her target because their captains had heard that there would be gun practice and the passengers at a shilling ahead wished to see the fun but they didn't think said my informant that i was the man who'd have been hung drawn and quartered if a life was lost they anchored slap behind the island i was firing at experimental firing at a dummy gun if you please with six inchers twelve pounders and maxims all turned loose together they were angry when we told em to go away out of the strong-shouldered atlantic swell bluer than sapphires rose the double fanged rock of the fastnet we were close enough to see its steps and derricks and each wave as it shot thirty feet up the rocks the fastnet in fair weather it was like meeting a policeman in evening dress one does not think of the fastnet save as a blessed welcoming wink of light through storm and thick weather big atlantic rollers the irish coast is a never-failing surprise to the big atlantic rollers they trip and ground you can see them check on the shallows fling up a scornful eyebrow and then lose their temper and shape in great lashings of creamy foam that's beerhaven said the bridge indicating an obscure aperture in the jagged coast-line we shall find the fleet round the corner the tide's setting us up a little did you ever read the two chiefs of dunboy we shall open dunboy house in a minute round the corner and a half-nine sang the ledsman cursing the long-stocked port anchor under his breath for he had to cast to one side of it and it stuck out like a cat's whiskers we were between two rocky beaches split and weathered by all the gales of the atlantic black boulders embroidered with golden weed and beryl bays where the rollers had lost their way and were running in rings behind them the green tiny fielded land dotted with white cottages climbed up to the barren purple hills ah the arrogance here anyhow see her puff the strongest fleet in the world a monstrous plume of black heavy smoke went up to the sky we whipped round a buoy and came on the fleet there were eight battleships alike as peas to the outsider and four big cruisers they were not cruising or manoeuvring just then but practising their various arts and crafts the marines fell in on the poop and with bugles and all proper observances we paid our compliments as we ran past the sterns of the cruisers waiting the admiral's word to moore he's given us a billet of our own under his wing too an officer shot down on to the forecastle while the yeoman of signals whose nose is that of a hawk kept an unshut eye on the flag isn't there a four-foot patch somewhere about here said a calm and disinterested voice the navigator having brought her in did not need to wrestle with cables and our anchors with their low cramped davits are no treat we told em about our anchors in the dockyard said the bridge we told em so distinctly and they said we're very much obliged to you for the information and will make the changes you recommend in the next boat of your class that's what i call generosity does that ship always behave like that i asked from all three funnels of a high stubby cruiser the smoke of a london factory insulted the clean air oh no she's only burning muckings like the rest of us she's our chummy ship she's a new type she and the furious fleet rams they call em rather like porcupines aren't they the two had an air of bristling hog-backed ferocity strangely out of keeping with the normal reserve of a man-of-war the blake long and low looked meek and polite beside them but i was assured that she could blow them out of the water their own captains of course thought otherwise ashore in ireland All Ireland was new to me, and I went ashore to investigate Castleton's street of white houses, to smell peat smoke, and find Dan Murphy, owner of a jaunting car and ancient friend of the wardroom.

"If you was to shoot me with one of them things and I was ever to find it out," said Dugan, a lad of twenty, "I'd be darn right peeved about it." Dugan stood over six feet in height.

His jaw resembled the Rock of Gibraltar, and his hair suggested a Vesuvius in eruption.

His favorite literature, I suspected, was the biography of Jesse James.

He carried a.44 in a soft leather holster, cut wide to facilitate a quick draw.