United States or Djibouti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I consorted with him for an hour in the packed and dancing engine-room, when Moorshed suggested "whacking her up" to eighteen knots, to see if she would stand it. The floor was ankle-deep in a creamy batter of oil and water; each moving part flicking more oil in zoetrope-circles, and the gauges invisible for their dizzy chattering on the chattering steel bulkhead.
And we looked each in the other's face, and we nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss. Moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke over the green-bedded villas of Torquay to show us the magnitude of our victory.
I had followed the clear precision of each word with a dumb amazement which seemed to leave my mind abnormally clear. I saw Captain Malan's eye turn from Moorshed and seek that of the Cryptic's commander. And he telegraphed as clearly as Moorshed was speaking: "My dear friend and brother officer, I know Panke; you know Panke; we know Panke good little Panke!
"Liker twenty-nine, an' niver no whistle." "Yes, we always do that. Do you want a tow to Brixham?" said Moorshed. A great silence fell upon those wet men of the sea. We lifted a little toward their side, but our silent, quick-breathing crew, braced and strained outboard, bore us off as though we had been a mere picket-boat. "What for?" said a puzzled voice. "For love; for nothing.
The Agathites are not, as you might say, an' yet they can't live with 'im. It's the discipline that does it. 'Ark to the bald an' unconvincin' watch-officer chimin' in. I wonder where Mr. Moorshed has got to?" We drifted down the Devolution's side, as we had drifted down her sister's; and we dealt with her in that dense gloom as we had dealt with her sister. "Whai! 'Tis a man-o'-war, after all!
The fog was as dense as ever we moved in the very womb of night but I cannot recall that I took the faintest note of it as the dinghy, guided by the tow-rope, disappeared toward the Agatha, Pyecroft rowing. The bell began again on the starboard bow. "We're pretty near," said Moorshed, slowing down. "Out with the Berthon. Mr. Morgan stays, too, for signalling purposes."
He lifted me inboard, where Moorshed and six pirates lay round the Agatha's hatch. There was a hint of daylight in the cool air. "Where is the old man?" I asked. "Still selling 'em fish, I suppose. He's a darling! But I wish I could get this filthy paint off my hands. Hallo! What the deuce is the Cryptic signalling?" A pale masthead light winked through the last of the fog.
"Hell!" said the first lieutenant, and fled away. The Cryptic's boat was already at that cruiser's side, and semaphores flicked zealously from ship to ship. We floated, a minute speck, between the two hulls, while the pipes went for the captain's galley on the Devolution. "That's all right," said Moorshed. "Wait till the gangway's down and then board her decently.
He handed a little paper to Moorshed. "You see, Sir, the trouble was, that Mr. Carteret-Jones bein', so to say, a little new to his duties, 'ad forgot to give 'is gunner his Admiralty orders in writin', but, as I told Commander Fasset, Mr. Jones had been repeatin' 'em to me, nervous-like, most of the way from Portsmouth, so I knew 'em by heart an' better.
Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed revolving in his orbit from the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room, conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll's house of a foc'sle learned in experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge, authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his play.
Word Of The Day