[2] Chief Boatswain's Mate.
CHAPTER VII
CARRYING ON
The fresh Northern breeze sent the waves steeplechasing across the
surface of the harbour, and lapping over the hull of a British
Submarine as she moved slowly past the anchored lines of the
Battle-fleet towards the entrance.
Her Commanding Officer stood beside the helmsman, holding a soiled chart in his hands; further aft on the elliptical railed platform of the conning tower a tall, angular, grey-haired man, clad in civilian garb, stood talking to the First Lieutenant. A Yeoman of Signals, his glass tucked into his left arm-pit, was securing the halliards to the telescopic mast, at which fluttered a frayed White Ensign. A couple of figures in sea-boots and duffle coats were still coiling down ropes and securing fenders, crawling like flies about the whale-backed hull. A hundred and fifty feet astern of the conning-tower the unseen propellers threw the water into vortices that went curling away down the long wake.
"We'll pick up the trawler outside," said the Lieutenant-Commander, folding up the chart and sticking it into the breast of his monkey-jacket. "Deep water out there, and we can play about." His face was burned by the sun to the colour of an old brick wall; the tanned skin somehow made his eyes look bluer and his hair fairer than was actually the case; it accentuated the whiteness of his teeth, and gave his quick smile an oddly arresting charm.
The elderly civilian considered him with grave interest before replying. "Thank you," he said. "That's just what I want to do—play about!"
"The other experts are all in the trawler, with the apparatus," supplemented the Lieutenant-Commander. "We're under your orders, sir, for these experiments."
"Thank you," said Sir William Thorogood, Scientist; he drew a cigar case out of his pocket. "I feel rather like a man accepting another's hospitality and spending the day trying to pick his brains."
The Submarine-Commander smiled rather grimly. "You mean you're trying to find a way of cutting our claws and making us harmless?" he said.