“How long leave have you got, Tony?” asked Foster.
“A fortnight,” replied Aughtlone, and turned as the butler reappeared. “Hughes, take Mr. Mayhew and Mr. Longridge along presently and sand-and-canvas them. They can share one bathroom, and that’ll leave room for us. A fortnight,” he resumed, and extending his cigarette watched the steady smoke ascending. “Blown up last Tuesday, and thought it was a fair excuse to put in for some leave and fix up this dinner.... Nerves, you know, and all that.” He smiled.
“Of course,” said the fat man. “Very tryin’ work. We dropped six tons of explosives on Zeebrugge Monday night, and lost two machines. I got my leave all right though, thanks to a twitching eyelid.” He surveyed the company with an unmoved countenance. “Nerves are the devil unless you take ’em in time; and I’m getting old....” He chuckled fatly.
Hughes appeared on the threshold with the announcement that the baths were ready. He had known and suffered gladly most of that laughing assembly off and on for the past decade. “Put a nice cake of dog-soap in each one, Hughes,” said Brakespear, “and have their clothes baked.... They’re trying to come the ‘Back to-Blighty-from-the-Trenches’ on us, these heroic figures from the Battle Fleet and Battle Cruiser Fleet. Ask ’em to tell you about the Battle of Jutland, Hughes.”
. . . . .
Dinner, with the mellow candlelight half revealing the portraits of bygone Aughtlones on the walls, had reached the duck-and-green-peas stage when Retrospection laid a cold finger on the mind of the Battle Fleet’s representative. “Very nearly thought our leave was going to be kyboshed,” he observed to Longridge.
“Last Monday? Yes, so did I. Directly we got the steaming signal I thought all was over. We didn’t know the battleships were out till we got to sea: heard you chatting to the Admiralty on the H.P. wireless wave, and then we thought there was something on.” The Battle Cruiser Wireless Expert chuckled. “After a bit the Hun woke up and started bleating, and we got scraps of Telefunken from the south, mixed up with pats on the back to our destroyers from the Admiralty.”
The youngest modern destroyer commander in the service moved uncomfortably in his chair.
“And in the morning ‘Peace, perfect peace’ from the flagship and ‘Back to harbour,’” said the gunnery lieutenant from the Battle Fleet. “The usual weary stunt. You bagged a Zepp, though, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Inquisitive blighter. You’d have enjoyed that.”