“That last was the one you ‘threw the hammer’ at, wasn’t it?” I asked, leaning far out to make my words carry down to D——’s now blanket-muffled ears.
“Yes,” came the wool-dulled answer. “Tell you some other night. Gotta get warm now. Toddy can’s empty. Make a tent of the blankets with your knees, and take the electric heater to bed in it, if you can’t stop shivering any other way. Good night.”
CHAPTER IX
“Q”
At three miles, as seen from the bridge of the battleship, the small craft which was steering a course that would bring her across our bows in the course of the next few minutes was absolutely nondescript, completely defying classification. A mile closer, however, it appeared to be as plain as day that she was some ancient fishing boat, but bluffer of bow and broader of beam than the oldest of trawlers or drifters in the service. It was only when she was right ahead, and but six or eight cables’ lengths distant, that a vagrant sun-patch came dancing along the leaden waters beyond her to form a scintillant background against which she stood out as what she was—the sweetest-lined little steam yacht that ever split a wave. The fishing-boat effect had been obtained by a simple arrangement of colours which effectually clipped the clippiness from her clipper bows and equally effectually discounted the graceful overhang of her counter.
In plain words, they had blocked in the lines of a bluff, squatty tug on her hull with some kind of paint that was very easy to see, and covered the
rest of her with a paint that was very hard to see. A few changes in rig, and the alteration was complete.
“Quite the cleverest and simplest bit of camouflage I ever saw,” said the captain, lowering his binoculars. “It’s only the fact that we’re looking down on her from a considerable height against that bright sheet of water that gives a chance to follow her real lines at all. From the deck—and even more so from the bridge of a submarine, or through its periscope—it would be a lot easier to tell what she isn’t than what she is. As a matter of fact, I can’t say that I know what she is even now. It is evident that she was a yacht, and no end of a beauty at that. But now, in that guise—probably some sort of patrol or anti-U-boat worker, for a guess, perhaps a ‘Q.’”