“My Man!” she whispered. “My Man!”
“GATE, THERE! GATE!”
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET
“Through all the monotony of its unending vigil, the Spirit of the Fleet remains unchanged.”—Daily Paper.
A flotilla of mine-sweeping sloops entered harbour with the last of the light and secured to their buoys; they were weary sea-battered little ships, and for a while they remained as silent as a stable-full of costermongers’ donkeys at the close of a hard day’s work. The ebb tide strengthened and they swung to their moorings in an invisible “rip” that swept round a curve of the adjoining island. One by one the cables tautened and the line straightened.
“That’s better,” said one. “Now we can talk comfortably.”
“Talk!” echoed her neighbour. “Who wants to talk? I want to rest. Did you see that signal just now from the S.O.M.S.?” (Senior Officer of Mine-sweepers). “We slip at dawn, my hearties, to go over the ground again—the same old ground in the dawn—ugh!” Her tone was jerky and irritable. “I hate the dawn.”
“Hullo, hullo!” observed a Subdivisional Leader. “Nerves a bit—eh?”
“Nerves be sugared! That affair this morning was nothing. No, I don’t care about the dawn, that’s all. Diving seafowl break the surface just under my bows and give one a turn in a bad light.”