“Hi! For the crest of a breaking sea!
Ho! For the deep sea roll!
Stanchions down and tubes trained free—
Ain’t you comin’ along wi’ we,
Or d’you know of a better ’ole?”
Irritating doggerel to anyone whose orders are to remain at their moorings at three hours’ notice. The singer broke off and they all started halloing:
“Hi! Gate, there! Gate! The sun’ll be scorching our eyes out before we’re through!’
The roar of their fans died away down wind and the flotilla passed through the distant gates and was swallowed by the misty moonlight of the outer sea.
The boom-marking trawlers, the humblest of all units of His Majesty’s Fleet, reeled and staggered and nodded to each other after they had passed.
“Yon destroyers,” said one, “they’re gey witless bodies, A’m thinkin’.”
“Aye,” said a companion dourly, “aye, juist that.”
They settled down again to silence and the heart-breaking monotony of their toil. A quarter of an hour elapsed before the silence of the boom line was broken again; then the youngest of the trawlers spoke:
“Eh!” he said, and sighed to the bellying floats, “A’d like fine to be a destroyer.”
Then silence again.