As our mercantile marine was to be found in nearly every sea, though in greater accumulation in some areas than in others, its defence against the assaults of an enemy could only be ensured by the virtual ubiquity of our cruising force.

Each individual had some invalid story to relate, and I too, so far forgot my usual taciturnity as to indulge my hearers with a detail of my late indispositionof its origin in the Mysterious Tailorof the wretch's inconceivable persecutionof the fiendish peculiarities of his appearanceof his astonishing ubiquity, and lastly, of my conviction that he was either more or less than man.

It is to be doubted whether he knew they were there at all, in spite of their manifest ubiquity and equally manifest pulchritude.

The strategy of the time, the correctness of which was confirmed by long belligerent experience, rejected the employment of a restricted number of powerful cruisers, and relied upon the practical ubiquity of the defending ships, which ubiquity was rendered possible by the employment of very numerous craft of moderate size.