The officer addressed put his empty gla.s.s between his knees and proceeded to fill a cherrywood pipe of villainous aspect from a Korean oiled-silk tobacco pouch.

"Took a flapper to the movies," was the grave and somewhat unexpected reply.

Thorogood, lounging in any easy att.i.tude against the door, took up the tale of gallantry. "Apparently the star film of the afternoon was 'Britain's Sea-Dogs, or Jack-Tars at War,' and that appears to have been too much for our little Lord Fauntleroy. He slipped out unbeknownst to the fairy, and I found him at the club an hour later playing billiards with the marker."

The cavalier relaxed not a muscle of his sphinx-like gravity. "Never know what to do with myself on leave," he observed in sepulchral tones.

"Always glad to get back. Like the fellow in the Bastille--what?" He raised his empty tumbler and scanned the light through it with sombre interest. "Long ship, this, James."

The phrase is an old Navy one, and signifies much the same thing as the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.

"Sorry," apologised the host. "There isn't any more soda, I'm afraid, but----"

"Don't mind water," said his guest, diluting his tot from the water-bottle. He turned to the India-rubber Man.

"What ship're you going to?" he asked.

Standish named the ship to which he had been appointed. The other took a sip of his whisky and water and nodded with the air of one whose worst misgivings had been confirmed.

"I remember now: I saw your appointment. James and I belong to her.

We're going to be shipmates, then." He blew a cloud of smoke ceilingwards. "It's all right in one of those new ships: no scuttles: tinned air and electric light between decks: wake up every morning feeling's if you'd been ga.s.sed. An' the turrets----" He plunged gloomily into technicalities that conveyed the impression that the interior of a turret of the latest design was the short cut to a lunatic asylum. "I'm the a.s.sistant Gunnery Lieutenant in our hooker, and I tell you it's a dirty business."

"What d'you do for exercise?" queried the India-rubber Man when the a.s.sistant Gunnery Lieutenant lapsed again into gloomy silence.

"Plenty of that," said Thorogood. "Deck-hockey and medicine-ball--you mark out a tennis-court on the quarter deck, you know, and heave a 9-lb.

ball over a 5 ft. net--foursomes. Fine exercise." He spoke with the grave enthusiasm of the athlete, to whom the attainment of bodily fitness is very near to G.o.dliness indeed. "You can get a game of rugger when the weather is good enough to allow landing, and there's quite a decent little 9-hole golf course. Oh, you can keep fit enough."

"How about the sailors--are they keeping cheery?"

Thorogood laughed. "They're amazing. Of course, we've got a real white man for a Skipper--and the Commander, too: that goes a long way. And they're away from drink and--other things that ain't good for 'em.

Everybody has more leisure to devote to them than in peace-time: their amus.e.m.e.nts and recreations generally. Cinema shows and regattas, boxing championships, and all the rest of it. There's fifty per cent. less sickness and fewer punishments than we ever had in peacetime. Of course, it's an exile for the married men--it's rough on them, but on the whole there's jolly little grumbling."

"Yes," said the India-rubber Man. "It must be rough on the married men."

He felt suddenly as if an immense period of time had pa.s.sed since he said good-bye to Betty: and the next moment he felt that he had had enough of the others. He wanted to get along to his own compartment where the scent of violets had lingered.

He rose, stretching himself, and slipped his pipe into his pocket.

"Well," he said, "'Sufficient unto the day.' I'm turning in now."

There was a little pause after his departure, and Thorogood prodded the bowl of his pipe reflectively.

"I wonder what's happened to the India-rubber Man?" he said. "It's some time since I saw him last, but he's altered somehow. Not mouldy exactly, either...."

"He's married," said the King's Messenger, staring at the shaded electric light overhead, as he sprawled with one elbow on the pillow.

Mouldy Jakes gave a little grunt. "Thought as much. They get like that." He spoke as if referring to the victims of an incomprehensible and ravaging disease. "An' it's always the good ones that get nabbed."

He eyed the King's Messenger with an expression of melancholy omniscience. "Not so suspicious, you know."

"Well," said Thorogood, "that is as may be: but I'm off to bed. Come along, Mouldy."

The misogamist suffered himself to be led to the double-berthed compartment he shared with Thorogood.

The King's Messenger locked the door after their departure and got into pyjamas. For a long time he sat cross-legged on his bunk, nursing his maimed limb and staring into vacancy as the express roared on through the night. Finally, as if he had arrived at some conclusion, he shook his head rather sadly, turned in, and switched out the light.

"Good lad, Podgie," observed Thorogood reflectively to his companion, as he proceeded to undress.

Mouldy Jakes, energetically brushing his teeth over the tiny washing-basin, grunted a.s.sent.

"Ever met my cousin Cecily?" pursued Thorogood. "No, I don't think you did: she was at school when we stayed with Uncle Bill before the war."

"Shouldn't remember her if I had," mumbled the gallant.

"She's Uncle Bill's ward, and by way of being rather fond of Podgie, I fancy--at least, she used to be, I know. But the silly old a.s.s won't go near her since he lost his foot."

Mouldy Jakes dried his tooth-brush, and, fumbling in his trouser pocket, produced a penny.

"Heads or tails?" he queried.

"Tails--why?"

"It's a head. Bags I the lower berth."

The India-rubber Man, in his compartment, had got into pyjamas and was sitting up in his bunk writing with a pencil and pad on his knees. When he had finished he stamped and addressed an envelope, rang for the attendant, and gave it to him to be posted at the next stopping-place.

It bore an address in Queen's Gate, London, where at the moment the addressee, curled up in the centre of a very large bed, was doing her best in the darkness to keep a promise.

[1] Torpedoes.

[2] Mines.

CHAPTER II

THE "NAVY SPECIAL"

Railway travel appeals to the sailor-man. It provides him with ample leisure for conversation, sleep, or convivial song. When the possibilities of these absorbing pursuits are exhausted, remains a heightened interest in the next meal.

The pale February sunlight was streaming across snow-covered moorland that stretched away on either side of the line, when the Highland Express drew up at the first stopping place the following morning.

From every carriage poured a throng of hungry bluejackets in search of breakfast. Many wore long coats of duffle or sheepskin provided by a maternal Admiralty in view of the severe weather conditions in the far North. The British bluejacket is accustomed to wear what he is told to wear, and further, to continue wearing it until he is told to put on something else. Hence a draft of men sent North to the Fleet from one of the Naval depots in the South of England would cheerfully don the duffle coats issued to them on departure and keep them on until they arrived at their destination, with an equal disregard for such outward circ.u.mstances as temperature or environment.

A night's journey in a crowded and overheated railway carriage, m.u.f.fled in such garb, would not commend itself to the average individual as an ideal prelude to a hearty breakfast. Yet the cheerful, sleepy-eyed crowd of apparently par-boiled Arctic explorers that invaded the restaurant buffet vociferously demanding breakfast, appeared on the best of terms with themselves, one another and the world at large.

A score or more of officers besieged a fl.u.s.tered girl standing beside a pile of breakfast baskets, and the thin, keen morning air resounded with banter and voices. The King's Messenger, freshly shaven and pink of countenance (a woman once likened his face to that of a cherub looked at through a magnifying gla.s.s), stood at the door of his carriage and exchanged morning greetings with travellers of his acquaintance. Then the guard's whistle sounded; the noise and laughter redoubled along the platform and a general scramble ensued. Doors slammed down the length of the train, and the damsel in charge of the breakfast baskets raised her voice in lamentation.

"Ane o' the gentlemen hasna paid for his basket!" she cried. Heads appeared at windows, and the owner of one extended a half-crown. "It's my friend in here," he explained. "His name is Mouldy Jakes, and he can't speak for himself because his mouth is too full of bacon; but he wishes me to say that he's awfully sorry he forgot. He was struck all of a heap at meeting a lady so early in the morning...." The speaker vanished abruptly, apparently jerked backwards by some mysterious agency. The train started.

The maiden turned away with a simper. "It was no his friend at all,"

she observed to the young lady from the buffet, who had emerged to wave farewell to a bold, bad Engine Room Artificer after a desperate flirtation of some forty seconds' duration. "It was himself."