The R.N.V.R. sub-lieutenant said he was tired of harbour and guessed he’d have a bump at it. The R.N.R. sub-lieutenant damned his eyes for a fool, but made the signal for shortening cable in his own division. The gale abated slightly, and the two divisions wallowed out in line ahead through the flying scud.
In mid-Channel they encountered a 4,000-ton steamer, derelict and drifting, down by the head, before the gale. The R.N.V.R. man watched her sluggish plunge and scend in the steep wind-whipped troughs, and decided she wasn’t as bad as she pretended to be.
“Take charge of both divisions of drifters,” he signalled to his confrère in the tiny flagship of the other division, “and take them into harbour. I am going to board.”
He then bade his skipper put his craft alongside the yawning derelict, and called for volunteers to accompany him. His men were no cowards, but they weren’t tired of life, and most of them had wives and families. “I’ll come,” said the cook, however.
They ran down wind under the sheering bulwarks, and the R.N.V.R. sub-lieutenant and the cook leaped at a trailing fall, climbed up it hand over hand, and tumbled on to the deserted upper deck of the steamer.
In the meanwhile, the R.N.R. sub-lieutenant had proceeded to windward, commended his command to their respective skippers, launched his cockleshell of a boat and drifted down in it, half-swamped, until he, too, was able to catch the fall, and so climbed inboard. He was in time to see the R.N.V.R. knock off the cable stoppers and let go both anchors. The drifters were swallowed by the mist and rain and proceeded to their base, calling on their gods to witness they were no cowards, but that there were limits to what a man could be expected to do for sheer love of adventure.
A swift survey of the derelict disclosed the fact that her No. 2 hold was flooded, either as the result of a mine or torpedo. On the other hand, all bulkheads were holding, and the engine-room was untouched. Said the R.N.R. man: “If we could get steam on her, I’d up killick and take this hooker into the Downs.” But three men cannot raise steam and navigate a 4,000-ton steamer without assistance, so they made themselves comfortable and waited.
Late in the afternoon a destroyer arrived, the salt spume crusting her funnels, and the handflags busy above her bridge screens.
“Prepare to abandon derelict. Will go ahead and veer a grass-line,” said the destroyer, in much the tone that a parent might adopt to an offspring who has nearly succeeded in getting itself run over by a motor-car.
“Well, now,” said the R.N.V.R. to the R.N.R., “that’s a funny thing: I’m bothered if I can read that signal. But my sight isn’t what it used to be.”