PART ONE
THE WOOING OF MOULDY JAKES
1
The late afternoon sunlight was slanting across the heather when the "Mantis" came puffing round a bend of the river.
Contrary to the established custom and traditions of British men-of-war, her crew maintained a breathless and high-spirited dialogue with the Captain, who seasoned it with shrill invective directed at a routed enemy, invisible and presumed to be in full flight amid the bracken.
At the bend alluded to, the Captain of the "Mantis" turned and shouted encouragement to the "Moth," who, some hundred yards astern, was negotiating some rapids and presumably under heavy fire.
"I say, do buck up!" he cried. "The Turks are retreating like anything!"
"I can't buck up," wailed the Captain, officers and ship's company of the "Moth." "There's a bramble all caught up in my petticoat."
"Take the beastly thing off then," commanded the Senior Officer, and turned to con his ship through the tortuous shallows of the Upper Reaches.
The fir-clad and boulder-strewn slopes of the valley had given place to the open moor, where the stream abandoned its headlong course and broadened into wide pools and shelving beaches of gravel strewn with bleached twigs.