"Pardon!" Lanyard insisted with every evidence of anxious excitement. "What you tell me makes it more than ever imperative that I reach New York without an hour's avoidable delay. I warn you, think well before you hinder the discharge of my duty."
"It is not necessary that I think," the commander replied. "My thinking has all been done for me. Me, I obey my orders; it is not my part to question their wisdom. Moreover, Herr Doctor, to my mind your insistence is to say the least suspicious. Even had I discretion in the matter, I should hold you. Therefore, you will keep a civil tongue in your head, or go below in irons immediately!"
He swung on his heel, showing an insolent back while he conferred with his subaltern.
And Lanyard shrugged appreciation of the futility of more contention against such mulishness. Not that the Bavarian was not right enough! As to that, one had really hoped for no better issue; but every shift is worth trial till proved worthless; and he was no worse off now than if he had submitted without complaint. Still one had Chance to look to for aid and comfort in this stress; and Chance, the jade, is not always unkind to her audacious suitors.
Even now she flashed upon Lanyard a provoking intimation of her smile.
He began to divine possibilities in this overt ill-feeling between the
officers; advantage might be made of the racial hostility of Prussian and
Bavarian.
The commander's attitude and tone were consistently overbearing, if his words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in Lanyard's hearing:
"Dog of a Bavarian!"
"The good Herr Captain," Lanyard suggested pleasantly, "is not in the most agreeable of tempers, yes?"
The high and well-born lieutenant spat comprehensively into the darkness overside. After a moment of hesitation he moved nearer and spoke in confidential accents. And the fragrant air of the night was tainted with the vinous effluvium of his breath.
"Always he prattles of his precious duty!" the Prussian muttered. "Damn his duty! Look you, Herr Doctor: months we have been on this cruise, yes, more than three months out of Heligoland, penned together in this ramshackle stinkpot, or isolated here in this God-forgotten hole, seeing nothing of life, hearing nothing of the world but what little the radio tells us—sick of the very sight of one another's faces! And now, when we have accomplished a glorious feat and have every right to look for prompt recall and the rewards of heroes, orders come to remain indefinitely and operate against the North Atlantic fleet of the contemptible Yankee navy! The life of a dog! And that noble commander of mine pretends to welcome it, talks of one's duty to the Fatherland—as if he liked the work any better than I!—solely to spite me!"