was "a visit to the Fleet," by Admiralty permission, for the purpose of
these letters to you, and through you to the American public, and that I
seem to have been so far the only woman who, for newspaper ends, has been
allowed to penetrate those mysterious northern limits where I spent two
wonderful days.

It was, indeed, a wintry visit. The whole land was covered with snow. The
train could hardly drag itself through the choked Highland defiles; and it
was hours behind its time when we arrived at a long-expected station, and
a Vice-Admiral looking at me with friendly, keen eyes came to the carriage
to greet me. "My boat shall meet you at the pier with my Flag-Lieutenant
to-morrow morning. You will pick me up at the Flag-ship, and I will take
you round the Fleet. You will lunch with me, I hope, afterwards." I tried
to show my grateful sense both of the interest and the humour of the
situation. My kind visitor disappeared, and the train carried me on a few
miles farther to my destination for the night.

And here I take a few words from a journal written at the time:

It is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up
over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey--the tide
rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along
over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense
flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the
shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The
morning is calm, and the water still. And on it lie, first a
cruiser squadron, and then a line of Dreadnoughts stretching
out of sight. No lights anywhere, except the green lights on
a hospital ship far away. The great ships lie dark and
silent, and I sit and watch them, in the cold dawn, thinking