You get to know just when the awkward squad of marines will be drilled and you know when the patent log, which is watched most carefully and which nearly everybody scoffs at because one never can depend much upon it, will be read. You know soon from the color of the water when you are on soundings, and you gather about the little contrivance far back on the quarter deck which unreels the wire for the lead that goes swishing hundreds of fathoms into the sea and finally brings up on the bottom and then records the depth. You gather about the chief quartermaster as he has the line pulled in and you look with him at the thermometerlike arrangement which by discoloration shows the depth of the water. You know just how often the temperature of the sea will be taken and how often the temperature of the air will be recorded in the log and the height of the barometer set down.

And then perhaps your mind turns again to the housekeeping of this home of 1,000 men. You visit the cook's galley, where the head cook and several assistants are busy night and day preparing the meals for the men with redhot stoves and great caldrons. You see the copper coffee and tea tanks, the soup tanks, the bean tanks and the rest. You see the electrically operated potato paring machine, just like the one used in the model kitchen of the world at West Point. You visit the butcher's shop, where about 2,000 pounds of meat is served out and cut up each day.

Then you go to the scullery and see the dishwashing machines, also copied from those in use at West Point and all large hotels. You visit the bake shop with its intense heat and the bake rooms store shop where the loaves of bread are piled up like so many cords of wood. You go to the sick bay and see a hospital in operation comparable favorably in every way with the best appointed hospital on land. You visit the operating room with its fullest set of surgical appliances. You even go to the brig and you see where men can be confined in cells or left out in the open so that they may have company and simply be restrained, the latter being the prevalent form for light punishments. You may attend the "mast," where the Captain every day holds his police court for light offences, and you may read in the log what has been done in each case. You may attend the summary courts-martial, where more or less serious cases are tried by a board of officers, but you must leave the room when the board goes into executive session to form its judgment on the case and fix the penalty if the accused is found guilty.

You may see the tests of powder and guncotton at regular intervals, and if you wish to go around at night with the carpenter's force you may see them making soundings of the hold every hour. You may see the tests of electrical machinery and you may watch the operation of closing all watertight doors every evening at 5 o'clock, and always in going in or out of port or in time of fog. You can even solve that mystery to every civilian as to why there is a sailmaker, with assistants, on a craft that carries no sail. When you find men working over canvas targets for days and days, making awnings and windsails, working at hammocks and the like, and when you realize that the ship carries more cordage than the old Constitution, you understand it all. The work of the sailmaker is no cinch. You can see the men once a month paid off in long lines, each man's signature attested by the division officer.

So you wander about hither and thither without any well developed plan and run across this and that form of employment and hard daily toil and you wonder how it can be, with so much to do and so little time in which to do it, that proficiency in any one line of work can be secured. Familiarity with it, however, shows that such a condition is approximated, and you begin to feel absolutely confident that if the ship ever did get into a scrap all this work and drill would show its effects at once in a way that would make you proud of the men and the ships of the navy. A sense of confident security comes over you and you soon have the feeling that nobody in the world can beat the Yankee sailor man for man in fighting and no ship of equal capacity in the world can beat the one on which you are sailing in a fight. You may be overconfident, but it's a comfortable kind of feeling to have.

You watch the rivalry among the various ships of the fleet in such matters as they can show rivalry in during a cruise as you begin to have confidence in the one on which you are a passenger. When target shooting comes this rivalry will take an impressive form. At present the rivalry consists largely in keeping distances, in making turns accurately, in making and responding to signals. Every morning you watch the flags go up at 10 o'clock, when the signals are hoisted on the second recording the number of sick and absentees on each ship. The officers and men read these flags off quick as a flash and you speculate about the condition of things on this and that vessel.

At 11:20 in the morning you watch the flags go up to catch the change of time for all clocks. At noon every one is keen to see the flags sent up telling how much coal has been used and how much each ship has on hand. Then come the flags which give the reckoning of the navigator on each ship as to latitude and longitude, either by observation or dead reckoning, and you comment upon the variations in the reports.

So the routine goes on and you get used to it and in some respects become part of it. You even fall into a certain station at certain times. The Sun man, for example, has one place where he is expected to report when the call is made. No other duties are assigned to him as a passenger. He has a certain station when the abandon ship drill takes place. He goes to his station, reports and then is excused. Otherwise he is free to do pretty much as he pleases, always observing as well as he can the little proprieties on shipboard, which are simply those governing the ordinary actions of gentlemen.

Every man on a warship has his little or big place that is his own and you must not cross its confines without permission. For instance, the starboard side of the quarter deck is the Captain's. You don't walk there unless he indicates that he would like to have you join him. The port side of the deck belongs to the other officers. The Captain almost never goes there, although, being the Captain, he can go where he pleases. Each officer's room is sacred when the curtain is drawn. And so on through the ship there is a little piece of territory sacred to each man or set of men. The fo'c'stle deck is the men's.

Launch etiquette, however, is peculiar. One of the first things to learn about travelling in a naval launch is that it is a little ship of itself. You salute its deck, so to speak, when you enter it if you observe the niceties. The highest ranking officer sits in the stern and goes into the boat last. All the others stand until he seats himself. He is the first to leave and the others go in the order of their rank. You mustn't smoke in a launch in the daytime, and if you do so on the sly you must be sure not to show your cigar in passing the flagship, for the quartermaster on watch on the after bridge will report you and there'll be trouble. You mustn't smoke at night except by permission of the ranking officer on board. If you see him light a cigar or cigarette all the rest of you may do so. Otherwise you will please throw away your cigar or cigarette when you enter the boat.