The Lieutenant of the Night Guard went cautiously down the wooden steps of the Barracks' Pier that led to the landing-place. Cautiously, because the tide was low, and experience had taught him that the steps would be slippery with weed. Also the night was very dark, and the lights of the steamboat alongside showed but indistinctly through the surrounding fog. At the bottom of the steps one of the boat's crew was waiting with a lantern. Its rays lit for a minute the faces of the two men, and gleamed on the steel guard of the cutlass at the bearer's hip.
"Infernal night!" said the Lieutenant from the depths of his overcoat collar. He had just turned out, and there was an exceeding bitterness in his voice. The lantern-bearer also had views on the night—possibly stronger views—but refrained from any reply. Perhaps he realised that none was expected. The other swung himself down into the sternsheets of the boat, and, as he did so, the Coxswain came aft, blowing on his hands.
"Carry on, sir?"
"Please. Usual rounds: go alongside a Destroyer and any ship that doesn't hail. Fog's very thick: got a compass?"
"There's a compass in the boat, sir." The Coxswain moved forward again to the wheel, wearing a slightly ruffled expression which, owing to the darkness and the fact that there was no one to see it, was rather wasted. For thirty years he'd known that harbour, man and boy, fair or foul, and his father a waterman before him.... He jerked the telegraph bell twice, gave a half-contemptuous turn to the wheel, and spat overside.
"Compass!" he observed to the night.
The boat slid away on its mission, and the shore lights glimmered wan and vanished in the fog astern. A clock ashore struck the hour, and from all sides came the answering ships' bells—some near, some far, all muffled by the moisture in the heavy atmosphere.
Ding-ding! Ding! Half-past one.
He who had borne the lantern deposited it in the tiny cabin aft, and with a thoughtful expression removed a frayed halfpenny paper from the inside of the breast of his jumper. To carry simultaneously a cutlass and a comic paper did not apparently accord with his views on the fitness of things, for he carefully refolded the latter and placed it under the cushions of the locker. Then he unhooked a small megaphone from the bulkhead, and came out, closing the sliding-door behind him. Finally he passed forward into the bows of the boat, where he remained visible in the glare of the steaming light, his arms crossed on his chest, hands tucked for warmth one under each arm-pit, peering stolidly into the blackness ahead.
Once in mid-stream the fog lessened. Sickly patches of light waxed out of indistinctness and gleamed yellow. Anon as they brightened, a human voice, thin and lonely as a wraith's, came abruptly out of the night.