"Any blooming where," shouted Thorogood. "As long as it is out of sight of the Fleet. I feel I've seen enough of the Silent Navy for an hour or two." Then raising his voice he chanted:
"Put me upon an island where the girls are few…"
"Right," retorted the Indian-rubber Man. "We'll go round this little headland. Ready about! Check the fore sheet! Come aft out of the bows, Pills, you clown, unless you want us to miss stays."
"I don't want to go to an island," cried the Surgeon plaintively, "where the girls are few." He surveyed the heather-crowned islets surrounding them on all sides, the lonely haunts of cormorants and black-backed gulls. "I'm all for houris and sirens and whatnots——"
The foresail swung across and knocked him into the bottom of the boat.
"You frail Ulysses!" exclaimed Thorogood, as they set sail on the new course. "You aren't to be trusted in these populous parts. We must lash you to the mast!"
"And stop his ears with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition.
A party set off into the bows to put the proposal into immediate execution, but the imminence of land and a shout from the helmsman arrested them in their purpose:
"Down foresail. Top up mainsail!" The cutter, with the skiff towing peacefully astern, glided into a little bay where miniature cliffs, some twenty feet in height, rose from a narrow shale-strewn beach. The anchor plashed overboard.
"Here we are, here we are, here we are again!" carolled the Surgeon lustily. "Come alongside, skiff! The landing of the Lancashire Fusiliers is about to commence under a withering fire!"