Chase came across to FitzJohnson. 'Dook, old man,' he laughed, digging him in the ribs, 'you've made a bally ass of yourself. The least you can do, after digging me out of my cabin at this unearthly hour, is to give me a cup of your cocoa. Grr, it's beastly cold!'
'Of course I will, No. 1. Come along.'
They left the bridge chuckling.
'Well,' remarked the yeoman of signals when they disappeared, 'I could 'a swore I'd seen 'im!'
Perhaps he could; but he, the cause of all the trouble in the first instance, had taken very good care to maintain a discreet position in the background during the captain's presence.
CHAPTER X.
WAR.
I.
Dinner in the wardroom had been over for some time, and the long table in the centre of the apartment was cleared. The mess, though it was close on ten o'clock, seemed very full of officers, far more crowded than on ordinary evenings, and it was noticeable that all wore 'monkey-jackets'—the ordinary eight-buttoned reefer coats usually seen in the daytime—instead of the customary mess-jackets, low waistcoats, and starched white shirts.
The unusual size of the gathering was accounted for partly by the fact that it happened to be the evening of 4th August 1914, when people were expecting things to happen, and partly because a six-inch gun casemate, which ordinarily served as an officers' smoking-room, had been bereft of its furniture, supplied with a number of evil-looking shell, and had otherwise been converted to the grim legitimate function for which it had originally been intended—that is, as an armoured position for the gun and its crew.