this a perfectly arranged drill throws over the ship's side (all in a few seconds) a lifeboat, perhaps only a cockleshell on the waves, but fully stocked with provisions and water and manned by a crew expert to the highest-point of seamanship. If fire breaks out in any one of the holds of a modern ship, the beginning of it is immediately registered under the very pose of the officers on the bridge. If a vessel is struck in sudden collision, with the pulling down of a lever or the twist of a wheel the officer on watch can shut with certainty every bulkhead door throughout the vessel, and, thus save her from at least immediate sinking. I must not forget the wireless, next in importance to the submarine bell, quick to call and to save in time of danger with the now proverbial "C. Q. D.," so recently proved sure in protection.

These things, already heard of, I went down to see for myself.

After the necessary interviews with the officials of the Cunard Line, I met and chatted with Captain Turner, R.N.R., of the Lusitania. He was simple, affable, and quiet, and we talked of ships and signals. "Yes," he said, "I am tired of the old fog-horn. We can't hear it half the time, and it is always uncertain. The birds may hear it over our heads, but not we. I remember some time back that I was taking her [the liner] across, and I hadn't been able to make an observation, because of fog, during the whole voyage, but I knew by dead reckoning that I must be somewhere near the other side, so I stopped her, took an up-and-down sounding, with the lead I mean; but that didn't do me much good. It was still thick weather, so I just headed her roundwent dead slow-and pointed for the shore. Presently I heard two guns in quick succession to starboard. I threw her helm over to port a bit, and told the officer on the bridge to time me off on his watch six minutes; and, sure enough, after the interval I heard again the two guns, and it meant to me the Head of Kinsale. We don't often have to do it that way, and it is lucky we don't. But I like these explosive signals, and I believe they will be adopted more generally by many of the lightships and lighthouses. No," he said, turning to me with a quiet, searching look

on his calm face, " people don't know the danger very often, but we on the bridge know it only too well. The bell is the thing, the submarine bell. I heard the one on the Boston Lightship in a storm once ten miles to sea. Another time, from the North West Lightship in a dangerous fog I picked up the sound eleven and a quarter miles off. But if you will come aboard I will show you more of our safety appliances; and if you keep out of my way when we sail next Wednesday, you can come down the Bay with us, if the pilot will promise to take you off when he leaves." I looked at Captain Turner and thought that, after all, the problem was only half solved by that which was inventive and automatic. It still required a man who made no error of judgment; who was cool, calm, collected, and who knew the seas as if they had been the streets of a mapped-out city.

I boarded the liner the following Wednesday morning as she lay at her dock with the blue-peter hoisted at her fore-truck, signal of her near departure. She looked doubly huge in the dense fog that held the city and harbor that morning, with her details in shadow and only her great sweeping lines outlined. Down on the wharf there was the rush and hurry of the passengers, and in gangs at every hatchway four hundred men were trundling, heaving, straining to get on board the last of the cargo which was billed to go. They take no chances as to the weather, for when the hour of sailing has once come, and there is a clearing, she will be off in a jiffy on her five-day flight across the Atlantic. For me the fog was the weather of fortune; it gave time to make the pictures, talk to the officers, and study the ship.

Spick and span, with all in perfect readiness, the hour of sailing passed, and still she did not go; the fog thickened and thinned in streaks. It blurred the eyes and tried to make my pictures gray. By turns it cleared up, and gave the vision of a sick sun that leered out and then fled; until suddenly, an hour and a half late, when there was a rift in the semi-darkness, her giant whistles on the fore smoke-stack screamed the note warning of departure. The Lusitania has two steam sirens and one six-inch steam whistle, and it was a wonderful noise indeed that they hooted