"Not so dusty," replied the Lieutenant in command of the Submarine, modestly.
She was a brand-new Battleship, and had cost a million and three-quarters. It was his twenty-fourth birthday.
XX.
THE NIGHT-WATCHES.
"Out pipes! Clear up the upper deck!" The Boatswain Mate moved forward along the lee side of the battery repeating the hoarse call. Slowly the knots of tired men broke up, knocking the ashes out of their pipes, or pinching their cigarette-ends with horny fingers before economically tucking the remnants into their caps. A part of the Watch came aft, sweeping down the deck, coiling down ropes for the night. Then, as the bell struck, the shrill wail of the pipe rose again above the sound of the wind and waves. It grew louder and shriller, and died away: then, rising again, changed to another key and ended abruptly. It was the sailor's Curfew—"Pipe down."
On the crowded mess-decks, where scrubbed canvas hammocks swung with the roll of the ship above the mess-tables, the ship's company was turning in. A struggle with a tight-fitting jumper, which, rolled up in company with a pair of trousers, was tucked under the tiny horse-hair pillow; a pat to the mysterious pockets lining the "cholera-belt," to reassure a man that his last month's pay was still intact, and then, with a steadying hand on the steel beam overhead, one after another they swung themselves into their hammocks and fell a-snoring.
Aft in the Gunroom an extra half-hour's lights had been granted in honour of somebody's birthday, and the inmates of the Mess were still gathered round the piano. It was a war-scarred instrument: but it served its purpose, albeit the hero of the evening—in celebration of his advance into the sere and yellow leaf—had emptied a whisky-and-soda into its long-suffering interior. The musician, his features ornamented by a burnt-cork moustache, thumped valiantly at the keys.
"And then there came the Boatswain's Wife,"
roared the young voices. It was an old, old song, familiar to men who were no longer even memories with the singers and their generation. But its unnumbered verses and quaint, old-world jingle had survived unchanged the passing of "Masts and Yards," and were even then being handed on into the era of the hydroplane and submarine.
"Ten o'clock, gentlemen!" said the voice of the Ship's Corporal at the door. The Sub. eyed him sternly. "You may get yourself a glass of beer, Corporal," and thereby won a five-minutes' respite. Then——