Part 10 (1/2)

I descended; Pyecroft, by a silent flank movement, possessing himself of all the provisions, which he bore to some hole forward.

”Have you known Mr. Pyecroft long?” said my host.

”Met him once, a year ago, at Devonport. What do you think of him?”

”What do _you_ think of him?”

”I've left the _Pedantic_--her boat will be waiting for me at ten o'clock, too--simply because I happened to meet him,” I replied.

”That's all right. If you'll come down below, we may get some grub.”

We descended a naked steel ladder to a steel-beamed tunnel, perhaps twelve feet long by six high. Leather-topped lockers ran along either side; a swinging table, with tray and lamp above, occupied the centre. Other furniture there was none.

”You can't shave here, of course. We don't wash, and, as a rule, we eat with our fingers when we're at sea. D'you mind?”

Mr. Moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked me over from head to foot and grinned. He was not handsome in any way, but his smile drew the heart. ”You didn't happen to hear what Frankie told me from the flags.h.i.+p, did you? His last instructions, and I've logged them here in shorthand, were”--he opened a neat pocket-book--”_'Get out of this and conduct your own d.a.m.ned manoeuvres in your own d.a.m.ned tinker fas.h.i.+on!

You're a disgrace to the Service, and your boat's offal.'”_

”Awful?” I said.

”No--offal--tripes--swipes--ullage.” Mr. Pyecroft entered, in the costume of his calling, with the ham and an a.s.sortment of tin dishes, which he dealt out like cards.

”I shall take these as my orders,” said Mr. Moorshed. ”I'm chucking the Service at the end of the year, so it doesn't matter.”

We cut into the ham under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with whisky, and then smoked. From the foreside of the bulkhead came an uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam.

”That's Mr. Hinchcliffe,” said Pyecroft. ”He's what is called a first- cla.s.s engine-room artificer. If you hand 'im a drum of oil an' leave 'im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin'.”

Very leisurely, at the end of his first pipe, Mr. Moorshed drew out a folded map, cut from a newspaper, of the area of manoeuvres, with the rules that regulate these wonderful things, below.

”Well, I suppose I know as much as an average stick-and-string admiral,”

he said, yawning. ”Is our petticoat ready yet, Mr. Pyecroft?”

As a preparation for naval manoeuvres these councils seemed inadequate. I followed up the ladder into the gloom cast by the wharf edge and the big lumber-s.h.i.+p's side. As my eyes stretched to the darkness I saw that No.

267 had miraculously sprouted an extra pair of funnels--soft, for they gave as I touched them.

”More _prima facie_ evidence. You runs a rope fore an' aft, an' you erects perpend.i.c.k-u-arly two canvas tubes, which you distends with cane hoops, thus 'avin' as many funnels as a destroyer. At the word o' command, up they go like a pair of concertinas, an' consequently collapses equally 'andy when requisite. Comin' aft we shall doubtless overtake the Dawlish bathin'-machine proprietor fittin' on her bustle.”

Mr. Pyecroft whispered this in my ear as Moorshed moved toward a group at the stern.

”None of us who ain't built that way can be destroyers, but we can look as near it as we can. Let me explain to you, Sir, that the stern of a Thorneycroft boat, which we are _not_, comes out in a pretty bulge, totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on the other 'and, _Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn_, and _A-frite_--Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with 'oom we hope to consort later on terms o' perfect equality--_are_ Thorneycrofts, an' carry that Grecian bend which we are now adjustin' to our _arriere-pensee_--as the French would put it--by means of painted canvas an' iron rods bent as requisite. Between you an'

me an' Frankie, we are the _Gnome_, now in the Fleet Reserve at Pompey-- Portsmouth, I should say.”

”The first sea will carry it all away,” said Moorshed, leaning gloomily outboard, ”but it will do for the present.”

”We've a lot of _prima facie_ evidence about us,” Mr. Pyecroft went on. ”A first-cla.s.s torpedo boat sits lower in the water than a destroyer. Hence we artificially raise our sides with a black canvas wash-streak to represent extra freeboard; _at_ the same time paddin' out the cover of the forward three-pounder like as if it was a twelve-pounder, an' variously fakin' up the bows of 'er. As you might say, we've took thought an' added a cubic to our stature. It's our len'th that sugars us. A 'undred an'

forty feet, which is our len'th into two 'undred and ten, which is about the _Gnome's,_ leaves seventy feet over, which we haven't got.”