Part 19 (1/2)
”Ask anyone you like,” replied the Commander, ”as long as they don't ask me to dine with them in their s.h.i.+p by way of revenge.”
”Carried!” exclaimed the Indiarubber Man. ”'Commander, 'e sez, spoke very 'andsome!' I will now indite a brief note of invitation. Bring me pens, ink and paper. _Apportez-moi l'encre de mon cousin, aussi du poivre, du moutard et des legumes--point a la ligne_! I got a prize for French in the _Britannia_.”
Here the Fleet Surgeon said something in an undertone about a village idiot, and left the mess. As he went out the First Lieutenant entered with an apologetic mien which everyone appeared to recognise instinctively.
The Torpedo Lieutenant looked up from his book. ”Oh, no, Number One, spare us for just one morning. I've got a headache already from listening to Bunje.”
The A.P. threw himself into an att.i.tude of supplication. ”Number One, consider the awful consequences of your act before it's too late.
Consider what it means. If you make the wardroom untenable, I shall have to sit in the office all the morning. I might even have to do some work!”
The First Lieutenant shook his head dourly. ”The chipping party is going to start in the wardroom this morning. Paint's inches thick on the bulkheads, and a sh.e.l.l in here would start fires all over the place. Bunje, if you want to write letters you'd better go somewhere else and do it.”
The Indiarubber Man thumped the blotting-paper on his freshly written sheets and looked up with his penholder between his teeth. ”I've finished, Number One. Admit your hired bravoes.”
As he spoke an ear-splitting fusillade of hammering commenced outside.
The steel bulkheads reverberated with blows that settled down to a persistent rain of sound, deafening, nerve-shattering.
”They've started outside,” shouted the First Lieutenant.
A general exodus ensued, and the Indiarubber Man gathered his writing materials preparatory to departure. ”I guessed they had,” he was heard to say. ”I thought I heard a sound as it might have been someone tapping on the bulkhead.”
The watchkeepers asleep on the settee stirred in their sleep, frowned, and sank again into fathomless oblivion.
The Indiarubber Man entered the wardroom in company with the Paymaster as the corporal of the ward-room servants was putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to the dinner-table. They surveyed the apartment without enthusiasm.
”Considered as a banquet hall, I confess it does lack something,”
observed the former.
”There's a good deal of paint lacking from the bulkheads. Number One has had a field day and a half.”
The other nodded. ”In the words of the song:
'There's no carpet on the floor, And no knocker on the door, Oh, ours is a happy little home . . .'
Phillips, bring me the menu, and let's see the messman has succeeded in being funny without being vulgar.”
Corporal Phillips brought the menu with the air of one who connives at a felony. ”Messman says, sir, it ain't all 'e'd like it to be, what with guests comin' and that. But I says to 'im, 'war is war,' I says, 'an' we can't expect eggs-on-meat _entrees_, same's if it was peace time.'”
”To-day's beautiful thought!” remarked the Indiarubber Man when the corporal had withdrawn. ”Really, Phillips has a knack of disclosing great truths as if they were the lightest gossip.”
The Engineer Commander came in, glancing at the clock. ”Five minutes more and the _What Ho's_ will be here. Bunje, my lad, you were responsible for this _entente_--have you any idea what we are going to do with them after dinner?”
”None,” replied the Indiarubber Man; ”none whatever. It will come to me sudden-like. I might dress up as a bogey, and frighten you all--or shall we try table-turning? Or we could dope their liquor and send them all back insensible. Wouldn't that be true Oriental hospitality!
They'd wake up to-morrow morning under the impression that they'd had the night of their lives.”
The members of the mess began to collect round the fireplace with the funereal expressions customary whenever a mess-dinner is impending.
”Which of the _What Ho's_ are coming?”