The Officer of the Morning Watch, who was staring through his binoculars into the darkness, turned and glanced at the small figure muffled in oilskins at his side. Many people would have smiled in something between amusement and compassion at the earnest tone of inquiry. But this is a trade in which men get out of the way of smiling at 5 A.M.—besides, he'd been through it all himself.
"Flagship's signalled some empty coal-lighters broken adrift up to windward—cruisin' independently. Go an' round 'em up before they drift down on the Fleet. Better man your boat from the boom and shove straight off. Smack it about!"
The small figure in oilskins—who, as a matter of fact, was none other than the Midshipman of the Second Picket Boat, brass funnel, vermilion-painted cowls and all—turned and scampered forward. It was pitch dark, and the wind that swept in rainy gusts along the battery caught the flaps of his oilskins and buffeted the sleep out of him. Overside the lights of the Fleet blinked in an indeterminate confusion through the rain, and for an instant a feeling of utter schoolboy woe, of longing for the security of his snug hammock, filled his being. Then the short years of his training told. Somewhere ahead, in that welter of rain and darkness, there was work to be done—to be accomplished, moreover, swiftly and well. It was an order.
Stumbling on to the forecastle, he slipped a life-belt over his shoulders, climbed the rail, and descended the ship's side by a steel ladder, until he reached the lower boom. It jutted out into the darkness, a round, dimly-discerned spar, and secured to it by a boat-rope at the farthest point of his vision, he saw his boat. The circular funnel-mouth ringed a smoky glow, and in the green glare of a side-light one of the bowmen was reaching for the ladder that hung from the boom. Very cautiously he felt his way out along it steadied by a man-rope, breast high. Looking downward, he saw the steamboat fretting like a dog in leash; the next instant she was lurching forward on the crest of a wave and as suddenly dropped away again in a shower of spray. Releasing his grip with one hand he slipped astride of the boom, wriggled on his stomach till his feet touched rungs of a Jacob's ladder, and so hung in a few feet above the tumbling water.
"'Arf a mo', sir," said a deep voice behind him. The boat's bows were plunging just below ... the ladder tautened with a jerk.
"Now, sir!" said the voice. He relaxed his hold and dropped nimbly on to the triangular space in the bows. As he landed, the Jacob's ladder shot upwards into the darkness, as though snatched by an unseen hand.
Steadying himself by the rail along the engine-room casing he hurried to the wheel. A bearded petty officer moved aside as he came aft. This was his Coxswain, a morose man about the age of his father, who obeyed orders like an automaton, and had once (mellowed by strong waters) been known to smile.
"Cast off forward!" The engine-room bell rang twice, and the Midshipman gave a quick turn to the wheel. For an instant the boat plunged as if in uncertainty, then swung round on the slope of a slate-grey wave and slid off on her quest. Forward in the bows the bowmen were crouched, peering through the rain. Presently one of them hailed hoarsely.
"Port a bit, sir," supplemented the Coxswain. "That's them, there!" He pointed ahead to where indistinct shapes showed black against the troubled waters. The bell rang again in the tiny engine-room, and the Leading Stoker, scenting adventures, threw up the hatch and thrust a head and hairy chest into the cold air. His interest in the proceedings apparently soon waned, however, for he shut the hatch down again and busied himself mysteriously—always within reach of the throttle and reversing-lever—with an oil-can.
Going very slow, the boat crept alongside the foremost lighter, a huge derelict that, when loaded, carried fifty tons of coal. They had been moored alongside one another to the wharf, but, rocking in the swell, had chafed through their moorings and broken adrift.