“Humph! MD, Plymouth. Oh, well, Dr Robson, I hope to find that I have been labouring under a mistake;” and he raised his hand to his cocked hat. “But I have my duty to do.”
“Don’t apologise, sir,” said the doctor, who had changed as in a moment from the sturdy naturalist into the urbane medical man. “I quite see your necessity for guarding against imposture. Pray proceed.”
The lieutenant nodded sharply, and leaving his guard of a couple of marines at the gangway, and the boat’s crew ready to spring up the side at the slightest alarm, he followed the skipper to the cabin hatch, the doctor hesitating as if in doubt for a moment or two, and then following deliberately down the cabin stairs.
Chapter Twenty Four.
The King’s Middy.
Rodd, full of excitement, was burning to follow too and see what he looked upon as the officer’s discomfiture; but there was that middy, who seemed to be left in command of the marines, and he felt a peculiar sensation which completely mastered him, filling him as it did with a desire to have what he afterwards called a good fall out with that fellow, who seemed to make him metaphorically set up his feathers all round his neck and go at him as a strange young cockerel of a different breed who had suddenly appeared in the poultry-yard where he dwelt.
So Rodd stayed on deck, thrust his hands into his pockets, ignored the presence of the middy, and with something of a strut marched up to the two marines in the gangway, whistling softly the while, gave each a friendly nod, examined their grounded arms and their stiff uniform with its abundant pipe-clay, and ended by spreading his legs a little, swinging himself slowly toe and heel, and saying patronisingly—
“Rather hot toggery that, my lads, for weather like this.”