The T.B. swung off to starboard, and slowed her engines. One by one they went past her—huge, silent, and scornful, while the T.B. rocked uneasily in the cross sea made by their wakes. The Captain watched them go, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. They were the cause of the day's activity, but it was seldom he met them at close range except like this, in the dark on his way home.
The line seemed endless, more and more dark hulls coming into view, and fading quickly into the dark again. As the last swung by the T.B.'s telegraph bells rang cheerfully, and she jogged off westward to where a faint low light flickered at intervals under the land.
BETWEEN TIDES.
A stranger, if suddenly transplanted to the spot, would have taken some time after opening his eyes to realise that the boat was submerged. He would probably decide at first that she was anchored in harbour. Far away forward, under an avenue of overhead electric lamps, figures could be seen—all either recumbent or seated—and from them the eye was led on till it lost its sense of distance in a narrowing perspective of wheels, pipes, and gauges. All the while there was a steady buzzing hum from slowly turning motors, and about every half minute there came a faint whir of gear wheels from away aft by the hydroplanes. From the bell-mouths of a cluster of voice-pipes a murmur of voices sounded—the conversation of officers by the periscope; while the ear, if close to the arched steel hull, could catch a bubbling, rippling noise—the voice of the North Sea passing overhead.
The men stationed aft near the motors were not over-clean, and were certainly unshaven; some were asleep or reading (the literature carried and read by the crew would certainly have puzzled a librarian—it varied from 'Titbits' and 'John Bull' to 'Piers Plowman' and 'The Origin of Species'): a few were engaged in a heated discussion as they sat around a big torpedoman—the only man of the group actually on duty at the moment. His duties appeared only to consist in being awake and on the spot if wanted, and he was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied as one of the leading spirits in the argument.
"Well, let's 'ear what you're getting at," he said. "We 'eard a lot of talk, but it don't go anywhere. You say you're a philosopher, but you don't know what you do mean."
"I know blanky well, but you can't understand me," said the engine-room artificer addressed. "Look here, now—you've got to die some time, haven't you?"
"Granted, Professor."