It was a grey day. The Essex flats lay dim and sombre. The heights on the southern shore were blurred. Yet they could see far out to the Nore. An east wind was whipping the flood tide into tiny waves, through which the launch clove, making, after the manner of her kind, a great show of speed, leaving the tramps that chunked outward bound as though they lay at anchor.
“Do you see her yet?” Reggie asked the captain.
“Maybe that’s her,” he pointed to a dim line on the horizon beyond the lightship, a sailless mast, if it was anything. “Maybe not.” He spat over the side.
“Are you gaining on her?”
“I reckon we’re coming up, sir.”
“What’s that thing doing?” Reggie pointed to a long low black craft near the Nore.
“Destroyer, sir. Engines stopped.”
“Run down to her, will you? How does one address the Navy, Bell? I feel shy. Ask him if he’s the duty destroyer of the Nore Command, will you?”
“Good Lord, sir,” said Bell.
The captain of the launch hailed. “Duty destroyer, sir?”