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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Ah, Jim!" said Mrs Thorogood, laughing, as she placed a huge plate of crumpets on the table, "it's only when a thing is right we are to do it with our might. Pulling the cat's tail is wrong. "`When a thing's wrong, Let it alone. When a thing's right, Do it with might. "Come now, supper's ready."
At nineteen minutes past three Cecily Thorogood, still self-possessed, but no longer very prettily clad, was submerged in the chilly Atlantic up to her shoulders and clinging to the life-line of an upturned jolly-boat.
The only sounds were the lapping of the waves along the riven hull and the intermittent reports of the quick-firers. Then came the shrill squeal of the pipes. "Fall in!" roared a voice down the hatchway. "Clear lower deck! Every soul on deck!" The bugle rang out again. Thorogood staggered with his burden across the buckled plating of the flat, and reached the hatchway.
"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 godliness indeed.
Knock off scrapping, Bosh and Matt, or you'll be all adrift." There was a general scramble for bags and suit-cases, and, burdened with their impedimenta, the Midshipmen made their way up on to the quarterdeck. Thorogood, Officer of the Watch, was walking up and down with an expression of bored resignation to the inevitable.
This family was not only Thorogood but thorough-going. The father was a blacksmith, with five sons and one daughter, and he used to hammer truth into his children's heads with as much vigour as he was wont to hammer the tough iron on his anvil; but he did it kindly. He was not a growly-wowly, cross-grained man, like some fathers we know of not he.
Thorogood picked up the message and pursed his lips up in a short, soundless whistle. "It's too much to hope that their main fleet's out," he said. "Their main fleet's sure to be in support somewhere," replied the Captain. "It's a question whether they realise we're all down on top of 'em, though, and nip for home before we catch them."
The end of the whole matter was that, a few months later, the Thorogood family emigrated to the backwoods of America, and began that career of useful, energetic, patient, God-directed labour which ended in the formation of a happy garden in a part of the wilderness which had formerly been the haunt of wild beasts and wilder men.
They walked to their corners amid a tempest of appreciative applause, and were instantly pounced upon by their anxious seconds. In one of the chairs just below the ring, Thorogood removed his pipe from his mouth and turned his head to speak to Mouldy Jakes, who sat beside him. "Good fight, eh?" he said, smiling. "Harcourt ought to win, of course, but Mordaunt's fighting like a young tiger.
"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 assent. "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.
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