“No,” said 19 in tones of tense exasperation, “not this time.... But if 73 tries to cut in under my stern again as she did just now, she’ll get a kick in the ribs one of these days——” her syren hooted angrily. “Gang-way! That damned drifter!”
Destroyers are as short-tempered as athletes before a “Sports.” They are always at short notice, and always trained to a hair, which, as every schoolboy knows, is a very touchy state. “Don’t forget,” said the leader, “until sunrise the challenge and reply is ‘St. George!’ and ‘England!’”
She rang down for half speed, and one by one the long, slim forms slipped out after her and picked up station in the darkness with the ease and sureness that belied all their abuse of each other.
The patient mine-sweepers rocked in the swell as the line went by. They were modest, hard-working little ships who did their jobs without talking about theories and the complications of their interiors. Sufficient unto each day was the labour and calamity thereof, without burdening the night with conjecture about the morrow.
“Hope you old plumbers did your job all right this afternoon!” shouted a destroyer as they passed. “My word, we’re a trusting lot of innocents!”
The sloops nodded and dipped, rather pleased in their humble way at being taken notice of. “You’re all right!” they chorused back.
The destroyers were slipping into their stride and their tempers were sweetening like a long-distance runner as he gets his second wind. “Who’s all right?” hailed the last boat in the line.
“We’re all all right!” roared the flotilla. They were nearing the light cruiser lines, and the light cruisers, swung to a turn of the tide, all looked the other way.
“Come on, all you fire-eaters!” called the flotilla leader, “ain’t you coming on the trail with us to-night? We’re the Y.M.C.A. off for a jaunt: quite respectable, my dear fellars, sure you.... You know all about our respectability, don’t you—’smarvellous!”
“Won’t mother let you come?” sniggered a quivering, palpitating black shadow as it slipped past, and then broke into ribald song: