Sailor Bill, highly peeved, insisted that he couldn't recall at that time that anything worth telling about had happened to him in the army.
Ikey asked, "You were wounded, weren't you? Well, tell us about your trip to Blighty. We can stand anything."
After two or three minutes of pretended hard thinking, Sailor Bill lighted his pipe (which was worse than German gas), and commenced:
"The second battle o' Wipers was still blowin'. I 'ad run amuck with three bullets (rifle, I think) during my cruise over the top. One caught me on the port side o' my compass and nearly carried away my port light, while the other two came aboard my starboard shoulder.
"I remember bein' lowered down a companionw'y into a brightly lit 'old an' placed on a blinkin' slab. Must a'been a first aid dugout. 'Pills' an' a Sergeant bent over me, an' after guessin' awhile said 'chloroform.' Then they tried to choke me by placin' a gas 'elmit over my forepeak.
"I blinkin' well gawsped for h'air a couple o' times, an' then the riggin' started topplin' about me. It was blowin' big guns an' my wind was cut h'off. Suddenly I lamped Big Ben makin' fyces at the Tower o' Lundun an' a bloody Whitechapel bus started crawlin' around Big Ben's fyce like a blinkin' fly. About this time the steam pipes busted, an' what with a lot o' hissin' an' rushin' noises, I took a temporary trip to D'vy Jones Locker.
"I opened me deadlights. I were aboard a stretcher, swathed in blankets, in a low-decked wooden buildin'. Across the w'y from me were a long row o' stretchers, each havin' a wounded Tommy for a cargo. Some were a-lyin' flat, while others were trussed up by folded blankets. Others were sittin' on their stretchers, a-nursin' o' wounded h'arms.
"Between bells a stretcher 'oldin' a Tommy would be carried down the deck by two stretcher-bearers, an' stowed aw'y in the opposite row.
"I could 'ear a bloody racket all about me, an' when I cyme out o' the fog, I got aboard o' their talk.