19 JUNE 1909, Page 3

The proceedings ended by a most amusing piece of panto-

mime on Whale Island, in which the sailors obviously enjoyed themselves hugely. There were trenches filled to bursting with bluejackets, in which mines and shells exploded, and these trenches were then attacked by a force which landed from barges -towed to the shore of the island by steam- launches. The sailors cared nothing for the rules which are enforced to prevent combatants at military sham-fights coming into physical contact. They flourished their cutlasses, they clubbed their rifles, and they waved them over each others' heads with the utmost realism and also with the utmost good humour. " .k "—very much " Jack ashore "—seemed specially to delight in realistic exhibitions of the death agony, and we are bound to say that here his acting would often have won him applause at the theatre. The attack, however, was not all stage play. Nothing could have been neater or better than the way in which a 'huge 4.7 gun was hauled from a barge, drawn up a steep slope, and got into action by a crew of some fifty or sixty men.