‘Eighty feet,’ shouted Raymond; ‘take her down, men, quick now. Oh, hell! we’re rammed,’ and the whole room rose and fell on itself in a kicking and struggling mass.
‘Here, I say you fellows,’ cried the irate army captain. ‘This is a bit thick. I’ve got decent clothes on. You are a lot of ... of Submarine Toughs.’
He was dragged to his feet and dried and brushed (there had been a good deal of water floating about, ‘to make it more realistic,’ as Seagrave put it), and his ruffled feelings were restored with whisky. Then the party disappeared to tidy itself for the dance, and ten minutes later the seekers after submarine knowledge trickled down to the drawing-room where the ‘Submarine Toughs’ were waiting to receive the ladies, looking very angelic and innocent in spite of the recent mêlée.
The ladies arrived, and the dance opened with a waltz banged out of the patient if wheezy old hotel piano by the gushing Miss Bored Stiff, and ten couples took the floor with great gusto, while the manager alternately held up his hands in horror and beamed benevolently on the revels. The waltz was followed by a set of lancers, and the game got really going. Supper was much in evidence, and Sam Browne belts and dark blue and gold dashed about with ices and claret cup, and picked up fans and wrote things on programmes and generally did the gallant.
And so, Miss Bored Stiff played, and the girls giggled, and the mothers beamed, and even a few of the fathers, terrifying people, were sufficiently melted to accept a drink, and the evening wore on and everybody enjoyed themselves. The young gentleman in khaki, with the thin gold stripe on his sleeve, danced with the girl in the red sash four times, and the Army Captain acted as steward till he lost his rosette, more by design than accident, and hurled himself into the two-step like a three-year-old. Then the mothers gathered their bairns about them, and ‘good-nights’ were exchanged, and the fathers remained and gave expert opinions about the war, and listened with deference to the expert opinions of others who two years before they would have considered babes-in-arms, and every one went happily to bed.
But no one knew of the revels held in the Petty Officers’ Mess that night to which the Sergeants of the local defence force and their ‘good ladies’ had been invited, or of how the coxswain and the T.I. danced attendance on the Master Gunner’s daughter, or how Hoskins so far forgot his dignity as to perform a step dance much to the edification of the guests and the admiration of the entire engine-room staff.
These things are secret, and the veil is never lifted ... in public, for the next day work had to be carried out in the Service manner, and every one was his usual staid and former self.
And that’s another of the unwritten rules that pertain to the Laws of the Navy.
* * * * *
And then the final spasm when two days later the escort Destroyer swung out of the harbour and ‘123’ followed her, laden with kit and belongings and spare parts, and containers, and a host of minor matters purchased for less fortunate comrades in the Parentis. Out through the dock entrance and past the harbour heads, and Darlton and that dockyard and the Royal Hotel were left behind, perhaps for good and ever. And the Destroyer zig-zagged and the Submarine puffed behind and was examined by trawlers and patrol-boats, and anchored for the night, and the following day arrived off the base once more and the familiar scenes of work and the old routine. As they stopped alongside the Parentis in the late afternoon they were met by the ward room en masse and hurried off to gin and bitters to celebrate their arrival. The parcels were distributed and blessings given and curses hurled over the contents, while Raymond and the skippers talked ‘shop’ over the alterations and work of the re-fit. But there was something missing, and it came out later after dinner when the juniors had cleared off and the seniors sat round in solemn conclave.