“I now propose,” he said, “that we should feast our victory while under way, which in itself is a battle of some stubbornness. In other words, Peter, you shall collect what there is of lunch from among the tarpaulins and suit-cases littering this most disorderly tub, and minister to my needs while I cling to my post at the wheel:
“An’ I never left my post, sir, for the cappen ’e bid me stay,
Tho’ me ’ands were frozen an’ cut, sir, an’ me face was stiff wi’ the spray;
But me thirteen children are dead, sir—an’ there’s nobody left to care,
So I stayed, like Casabianca, on the fighting ‘Téméraire’!”
It was no easy matter, with the deck tilted at an angle of 30°, to find the requisite bread and meat and ale, plates and forks and bottles. It struck Peter that sunset was a curious hour for lunch; as still more curious that the sun should set at all on this day which had begun so long ago. It was a lurid and tempestuous sky, jagged across by untidy streaks of black, the whole swimming canopy overhead as it were being sucked and drawn by red relentless fingers into the very heart of the western turmoil.
“Stuart, there’s no glass.”
“Must be.”
“Isn’t,” crossly.
“A tin mug, then?”
“Nothing but a flower-pot—will that do? Why do you keep flower-pots on board? Is it that you may grow nasturtiums while becalmed?”
“A flower-pot will hold the beer all right, if you keep your thumb in the hole at the bottom, all the while I drink.”
Peter refused. “I’m not your squaw.” And Stuart related with reproachful emphasis the story of the little boy in Holland who had not minded plugging a hole with his thumb all through the weary night, to save his country from inundation. Nevertheless, Peter was not incited to emulation.