As we passed those silent, monstrous shapes, the Commander named them in turn, names which had been flashed round the earth not so long ago, names which shall yet figure in the histories to come with Grenville's _Revenge_, Drake's _Golden Hind_, Blake's _Triumph_, Anson's _Centurion_, Nelson's _Victory_, and a score of other deathless names--glorious names that make one proud to be of the race that manned and fought them.
Peacefully they rode at their moorings, the water lapping gently at their steel sides, but, as we steamed past, on more than one of them, and especially the grim _Tiger_, I saw the marks of the Jutland battle in dinted plate, scarred funnel and superstructure, taken when for hours on end the dauntless six withstood the might of the German fleet.
So, as we advanced past these battle-scarred ships, I felt a sense of awe, that indefinable uplift of soul one is conscious of when treading with soft and reverent foot the dim aisles of some cathedral hallowed by time and the dust of our noble dead.
"This afternoon," said the Commander, offering me his cigarette case, "they're going to show you over the _Warspite_--the German Navy have sunk her so repeatedly, you know. There," he continued, nodding towards a fleet of squat-looking vessels with stumpy masts, "those are the auxiliaries--coal and oil and that sort of thing--ugly beggars, but useful. How about a whisky and soda?"
Following him down the perpendicular ladder, he brought me aft to a hole in the deck, a small hole, a round hole into which he proceeded to insert himself, first his long legs, then his broad shoulders, evidently by an artifice learned of much practice. Finally his jauntily be-capped head vanished, and thereafter from the deeps below his cheery voice reached me.
"I have whisky, sherry and rum--mind your head and take your choice!"
I descended into a narrow chamber divided by a longish table and flanked by berths with a chest of drawers beneath each. At the further end of this somewhat small and dim apartment and northeasterly of the table was a small be-polished stove wherein a fire burned; in a rack against a bulkhead were some half-dozen rifles, above our head was a rack for cutlasses, and upon the table was a decanter of whisky he had unearthed from some mysterious recess, and he was very full of apologies because the soda had run out.
