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Updated: May 11, 2025
Astern of them was the picket-boat, a graceful feather of spray falling away on either side of the stem-piece. A concourse of Wardroom and Gunroom officers had crowded into her bows, and the Commander, purple with emotion, bellowed incoherencies through a megaphone.
The next moment the Dockyard tug burst into a triumphant frenzy, and the picket-boat, full of cheering, clapping mess-mates, slid alongside to take the painter. The First Lieutenant stretched out a large, blistered hand. "Shake, Pills," he said. One race is, after all, very much like another. Yet the afternoon wore on without any appreciable abatement in the popular enthusiasm.
With an additional false funnel to imitate British county-class cruisers, the Emden at daybreak of October 28 passed the picket-boat off the harbor unchallenged, destroyed the Russian cruiser Jemtchug by gunfire and two torpedoes, and, after sinking the French destroyer Mousquet outside, got safely away.
I haven't been shipmates with you for four years for nothing. There's nothing you can tell me about your hideous past that I don't know already." The picket-boat slid alongside the landing place and went astern. The Engineer Commander made his way towards the little cabin. As the senior officer of the party, his was the privilege of embarking last and disembarking first.
"I doubt if any of 'em'll face it," said the First Lieutenant hopefully, when The Day arrived. "There's a nasty lop on, and the glass is tumbling down as if the bottom had dropped out. It's going to blow a hurricane before midnight. Anyhow, they'll all be sick coming off." The Torpedo Lieutenant was descending the ladder to the picket-boat. "Bunje and I are going in to look after them.
It's too late to put it off now." He glanced at the threatening horizon. "They'll be all snug once we get them on board, and this'll all blow over before tea-time." Off went the steamboats, the Torpedo Lieutenant in the picket-boat and the Indiarubber Man in the steam pinnace, and a tremor of excitement ran through the little cluster of children gathering at the jetty steps ashore.
The small boys to a man disdained the helping hand, but scrambled with fine independence into the stern sheets. "Sit still a minute." The Indiarubber Man counted. ". . . Eight twelve! Hallo! Six absentees No, Corney, you can't steer, because I'm going to clap you all below hatches the moment we get outside." He raised his voice, hailing the picket-boat. "All right, Torps?"
Harcourt and Mordaunt, descending the accommodation ladder in the rear of the remainder of their party, were greeted by Morton, at the wheel of the picket-boat, with a broad grin. "Come on," he ejaculated impatiently. "Hop in! We've got to get back and be hoisted in. Who won the Light-weights by the same token?" "Billy did," replied Harcourt.
The men filed over the side and took their places in the boats waiting alongside, and as they sheered off from the ship in tow of the launch and followed in the wake of the distant picket-boat, the closely packed men suddenly broke into a tempest of cheering. The Captain was walking up and down the quarterdeck talking to the Commander. He smiled as the tumult of sound floated across the water.
We've got those 'League' corps I was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape through their ten days' camp; and we've crack corps of highly-paid mechanics who can afford a two months' 'heef' in an interesting Area every other year; and we've senior and junior scientific corps of earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high explosives, and do their 'heefing' in a wet picket-boat mine-droppin' at the ports.
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