"You might borrow five bob for me while you're about it," shouted a belated Engineroom Watchkeeper, struggling into his clothes.
"And me, too," called another. "Buck up, for the Lord's sake, and we'll have poached eggs for tea."
"And cherry jam," supplemented another visionary voluptuously, "and radishes."
Here a figure, who had been sitting on the lid of his chest swinging his legs, tilted his cap on to the back of his head with a snort that suggested outlawry and defiance to the world at large.
"Hallo!" exclaimed a neighbour, wielding a clothes-brush with energy.
"What's up? Aren't you coming ashore? It isn't your First Dog, is it?"
The outlaw shook his head. "No; my leave's jambed. You know that beastly six-inch wire hawser? We were bringing it to the after capstan yesterday, and the Commander——"
The aft-deck sentry gave two blasts on his fog-horn. Chest lids banged, keys rattled.
"Jolly rough luck!" commiserated his friend, and joined the stampede for the quarterdeck.
In thirty seconds the flat was deserted save for the disconsolate figure swinging his legs. Presently he climbed down from his chest and wended his way by devious and stealthy routes to the after conning-tower, where he smoked a surreptitious cigarette in defiance of the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions (his age being sixteen) and felt better.
In the meanwhile the picket-boat was driving her way shoreward with the emancipated members of Wardroom and Gunroom clustered on top of the cabin and in the stern sheets.