“Just for the same reason that danger-signals on railways and warning flags are always red,” said the other. “I suppose because the colour is more glaring and likely to be taken notice of; and no doubt, too, that’s why our soldiers are clothed in scarlet so that they can be all the more readily potted by the enemy?”
“You are pretty right there, Captain Dresser!” said, laughingly, a young naval officer standing near, who kindly took all further trouble off the Captain’s hands in the way of answering Bob’s questions and showing him round the ship, the machinery of which especially charmed him, being so much more imposing and complicated than that of the poor Bembridge Belle, which had interested him only yesterday, so to speak, though now washed to pieces by the relentless sea!
The movements of the eccentric aroused Bob’s chief wonder, the two piston-rods connected with it and guiding the motion appearing in their working like the crooked limbs of a bandy-legged giant “jumping up and down,” as he expressed it, “in a hoppety-kickety dance.”
Bob was called up from the engine-room by an extraordinary sound that proceeded apparently from the deck above.
This, as he ascended, grew louder and louder; until it became to him really awesome.
“What is that?” he asked the young lieutenant, who had accompanied him below and now followed him up, keeping close to his side. “Has anything happened, sir?”
“No, nothing’s happened,” replied the young officer, who was a bit of a wag. “That is our steam siren.”
“What is that, sir?” said Bob again—“I don’t understand you.”
“It’s the siren,” explained the other, “a thing like the steam-whistle, for signalling to passing ships.”
“It makes an awful row,” cried Bob. “Don’t you think so, sir?”