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of the island-continent still farther south have been lost after their escape from the prison-pen.

The Australian epic had been lent us by a fervent patriot of New South Wales. Our lack of knowledge that such a story existed had caused him as much surprise and horror as an Englishman's ignorance of "The Last of the Mohicans" might have caused an American. However, our apology was accepted, and the book was duly pressed upon us..

So we made delightful acquaintance with that tale which, without pretension to style, and frankly devoid of technic, yet has such charm of earnestness and truth, of clarity, and of restrained passion and power, as amply to justify the rank it is given by all Australians.

We finished reading "For the Term of His Natural Life" not long after we had assisted in bringing about the capture of a Moro outlaw, one Bebukan, known as the "wild boar of Basilan." After all, the bushranger is found in every land! It is necessary for the sake of civilization that his race be short and his end be sure, but we grant him always a meed of pity.

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How shall a mere naval officer, even although titularly reckless, dare to speak of Shakespeare?-of that Master Will who in the heaven of books is surely only a very little lower than the angels? Shakespeare for a seafarer? Why not? The surge of his majestic lines must reverberate in the souls of men who on their lawful occasions hear the thunder of the actual sea. Perhaps Shakespeare's lyrics usually make less appeal to the military mind than do his pentameters. But to some of us the lyrics bring mirth or melancholy as they alone can.

Certain salty lines recall to us a picture of a converted gunboat driven blind across the Celebes Sea before the northeast monsoon, ourselves sheltering from a pelting rain in the lee of the forward deckhouse, and a fireman at our side obliviously quoting to himself. It was Stephano's roaring lilt from "The Tempest." What a relish in it for any man who goes down to the sea in ships! "The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,

The gunner, and his mate,

Lov'd Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us car'd for Kate;

For she had a tongue with a tang,

Would cry to a sailor: Go, hang!"

as the restrictions and temper of the holy day's fast were thrown off with the fading sun, our eyes fell upon an inscription on a brass plate let into the wall.

"A text from the Koran," explained the interpreter.

When we were again safe on board our ship, we sought out an English copy of the great Mohammedan script.

Let us confess that the Koran seemed to us to possess small merit of literary form, whatever it may own as a philosophical study or as a historical record of manners. We pursued our search for its charm through the intricacies of a score of its surahs. In vain. We would far rather flee with the Prophet in the hegira or bow with him before the Kaaba than read any of his revelations by the way!

A good deal tossed about by the northeast monsoon and with 70 men down from "breakbone fever," our little gunboat limped into the port of Siassi in the Sulu Archipelago. We were among those tortured by dengue-the surgeon declared we must have some distraction for fevered mind and body. The ship's library was a thing of shred and patches, but by a miracle it yielded "Gil Blas."

Reclining in a chair beneath the canvas double-awning, the seabreeze eased the racked bones even as the humor of Le Sage's masterpiece relieved the weary brain.

So we owe a debt to the picaresque not lightly to be forgotten. Defoe's Moll and Colonel Jack, Smollett's Roderick and Peregrine, Fielding's Joseph and bluff Tom Jones, these are not so dear to us as Gil Blas, the supple rogue of Spain, slipping through every difficulty-to die in the odor of sanctity on his own estates. Even yet, when we dream at night with a touch of the old tropic malaria upon us, we hold the tattered pages of "Gil Blas," and hear, beyond the palm-crowned bluff, the thunder of the surf on the outer reef.

We read "For the Term of His Natural Life" while our ship lay at anchor in a harbor of Borneo. Above us, imminent, abrupt, formidable, loomed the heights of Mount Kinabalu, beloved of Dyak gods and devils. Among such cliffs might the bushrangers

of the island-continent still farther south have been lost after their escape from the prison-pen.

The Australian epic had been lent us by a fervent patriot of New South Wales. Our lack of knowledge that such a story existed had caused him as much surprise and horror as an Englishman's ignorance of "The Last of the Mohicans" might have caused an American. However, our apology was accepted, and the book was duly pressed upon us..

So we made delightful acquaintance with that tale which, without pretension to style, and frankly devoid of technic, yet has such charm of earnestness and truth, of clarity, and of restrained passion and power, as amply to justify the rank it is given by all Australians.

We finished reading "For the Term of His Natural Life" not long after we had assisted in bringing about the capture of a Moro outlaw, one Bebukan, known as the "wild boar of Basilan." After all, the bushranger is found in every land! It is necessary for the sake of civilization that his race be short and his end be sure, but we grant him always a meed of pity.

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How shall a mere naval officer, even although titularly reckless, dare to speak of Shakespeare?-of that Master Will who in the heaven of books is surely only a very little lower than the angels? Shakespeare for a seafarer? Why not? The surge of his majestic lines must reverberate in the souls of men who on their lawful occasions hear the thunder of the actual sea. Perhaps Shakespeare's lyrics usually make less appeal to the military mind than do his pentameters. But to some of us the lyrics bring mirth or melancholy as they alone can.

Certain salty lines recall to us a picture of a converted gunboat driven blind across the Celebes Sea before the northeast monsoon, ourselves sheltering from a pelting rain in the lee of the forward deckhouse, and a fireman at our side obliviously quoting to himself. It was Stephano's roaring lilt from "The Tempest." What a relish in it for any man who goes down to the sea in ships! "The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,

The gunner, and his mate,

Lov'd Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,

But none of us car'd for Kate;

For she had a tongue with a tang,

Would cry to a sailor: Go, hang!"

There in the lee of the deckhouse, that melancholy day of the rainy season in the Celebes Sea, the fireman opened a corner of his heart to us—or, at least, a corner of his mind. Perhaps that corner of his mind still held a saving Oxonian grace. Be that as it may, there was for the time no barrier of rank between us and him-Shakespeare was a veritable solvent of such things. We matched each other in quotations from "Love's Labour Lost," and "As You Like It," and "Cymbeline."

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'When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight. . .

Had we not seen the daisies of Warwickshire and the violets of Kent when on liberty from our ship? And if one has ever emerged from the New Forest on one of those misty-bright or sunny-wet days found only in Hampshire, he will remember always how the ladysmocks gleamed before him, " all silvery-white" in very truth. It seemed to us that the melancholy Jaques himself spoke in the fireman's husky tones:

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"Who doth ambition shun,

And loves to live in the sun

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleas'd with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see no enemy,

But winter and rough weather."

On the forest-clad hill of Santa Lucia in Santiago de Chile, the sun warms the Andean air. It is very pleasant to live in that sun! And on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, beloved of every naval 'Sloper," many an officer has ambition shunned-at least, for an hour! On Mariveles, in the Philippines, there can now be found no enemy, not even winter or rough weather; but we can remember when terror walked there by noonday as well as in darkness!

To naval officers who must so often live close to death-and in these days more than ever!—the requiem sung over Imogen in "Cymbeline" has a particular melody-and may put a sober period to these reckless comments on our reckless readings: Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the winter's furious rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and lasses must

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

[COPYRIGHTED]

U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

ACCURATE TRAJECTORIES BY MECHANICAL
INTEGRATION

By CAPTAIN E. F. EGGERT, Construction Corps, U. S. Navy

The problem of exterior ballistics, as it was left by Ingalls and Alger, had developed to the point where satisfactory accordance was obtained up to ranges that were fairly long. The integration of the ballistic formula was obtained analytically, using however approximations, certain variables being considered as constants.

It was known that these so-called constants could not be so considered after a certain limit had been reached in either range or angle of elevation, and beyond this limit the method failed to give satisfactory results, and no other method was known that would do so.

This limit, with modern heavy naval guns, was reached at about 20,000 yards, and, before the present war, naval practice was well within this limit, and no extension of the problem was required. Conditions have now changed, and the following method is intended to extend the satisfactory solution of the ballistic problem still further, to the possible limits of range of the present naval

guns.

To show how much the Alger method falls short of accuracy at longer ranges, it is only necessary to calculate a few complete trajectories at such long ranges, work out the values of the socalled constants at a number of points, and find their means, for the trajectory. This has been done, and the following examples will show the discrepancy:

There are two constants that cause most of the error. These are, first, the so-called integration constant, B; and, second, the air density constant, f. (Alger uses ẞ instead of B.)

The former, in the method now practiced, is considered equal to one, as an average of the whole trajectory. As a matter of

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