Now to take in tow an unwieldy lighter in the dark with a heavy swell running, and to moor it safely in the spot whence it came, is a piece of work that requires no small judgment. However, one by one, the three truants were captured and secured, and then, with the grey dawn of a winter morning breaking overhead, the picket boat swung round on her return journey. On the way she passed another boat racing shoreward for the mails. The Midshipman at the wheel raised his hand with a little gesture of salutation, and she went by in a shower of spray.
Half an hour later the Midshipman of the Second Picket Boat, garbed in the "rig of the day," was ladling sugar over his porridge with the abandon of one who is seventeen and master of his fate. A messenger appeared at the gunroom door—
"Duty Steam Boat's called away, sir."
Her Midshipman locked away his pet marmalade-pot (for there are limits even to the communism of a gunroom) and reached for his cap and dirk. "We ain't got much money," he observed grimly, "but we do see life!"
II.
CAPTAIN'S DEFAULTERS.
At the last stroke of six bells in the Forenoon Watch the Marine bugler drew himself up stiffly, as one on whom great issues hung, and raising his bugle sent the imperious summons echoing along the upper deck. Clattering forward along the battery he halted at the break of the forecastle and repeated the blast; then, shaking the moisture from the instrument, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and strutted aft. He had sounded "Captain's Defaulters."
An Able Seaman burnishing a search-light on the boat-deck heard the strident bugle-call and winced. Hurriedly he replaced his cleaning rags, and with a moistened forefinger and thumb adjusted a dank curl that peeped beneath his cap. He shared the belief, not uncommon among sailor-men, that the Captain's judgment at the defaulter-table is duly swayed by the personal appearance of the delinquent. Eyeing his inverted reflection in the big concave mirror, he screwed his face into an expression of piteous appeal, and, cap in hand, repeated several times in varying notes of regretful surprise: "I 'adn't 'ad no more'n a drop, sir, w'en I come over all dizzy." The rehearsal concluded, he flung himself pell-mell down the ladder. On the way he met a messmate ascending, who remonstrated in the brusque parlance of the tar.
"In the bloomin' rattle, I am," explained the disturber of traffic.
"Wha's up, then?"