The First Lieutenant shook his head dourly. "The chipping party is going to start in the wardroom this morning. Paint's inches thick on the bulkheads, and a shell in here would start fires all over the place. Bunje, if you want to write letters you'd better go somewhere else and do it."
The Indiarubber Man thumped the blotting-paper on his freshly written sheets and looked up with his penholder between his teeth. "I've finished, Number One. Admit your hired bravoes."
As he spoke an ear-splitting fusillade of hammering commenced outside. The steel bulkheads reverberated with blows that settled down to a persistent rain of sound, deafening, nerve-shattering.
"They've started outside," shouted the First Lieutenant.
A general exodus ensued, and the Indiarubber Man gathered his writing materials preparatory to departure. "I guessed they had," he was heard to say. "I thought I heard a sound as it might have been someone tapping on the bulkhead."
The watchkeepers asleep on the settee stirred in their sleep, frowned, and sank again into fathomless oblivion.
* * * * *
The Indiarubber Man entered the wardroom in company with the Paymaster as the corporal of the ward-room servants was putting the finishing touches to the dinner-table. They surveyed the apartment without enthusiasm.
"Considered as a banquet hall, I confess it does lack something," observed the former.
"There's a good deal of paint lacking from the bulkheads. Number One has had a field day and a half."