‘You’re probably speaking from bitter experience, Chief,’ asked Blake, one of the submarine captains.
‘I am,’ replied the Engineer, shaking his head. ‘Last time I took him on I got six at “Chicago low,” and he lurked me with a possible. I used to think I was a pretty fair hand at cutting, but I admit that where “159” is concerned I’ve met my Waterloo.’
‘By Jove, yes. She ought to be in by now, unless she’s had bad weather, which isn’t likely. You can usually trust “Snatcher” to sit on the bottom if it comes on to blow. But he ought to be back shortly. I always work it so as to get back in time for a bath before dinner when I’m on the patrol he’s got now.’
‘Look here, P.M.O.,’ protested a voice from the other end of the ward room. ‘These people are ordering more gin. In the interests of public health and the Service I appeal to you, as a medical man, to tell them not to, to put your foot down; in a word, to stop it. They’re going to start the gramaphone and it’s only half-past six, and I can’t stand it.’
‘It looks to me like an advanced case of alcoholic neuritis,’ replied the surgeon gravely, ‘for which the only remedy is a prolonged course of ragtime on the gramaphone at eight a.m. It had better work itself out, that is, unless they include me in their disgusting gin debauch, in which case I don’t mind prescribing something a little less drastic.’
It was the hour before dinner, when every one congregates for a drink before going below to clean and change, and the Parentis’s ward room was crowded. It was large as ward rooms go, and furnished in the usual Service style, with maroon leather chairs and sofas, a long table covered with the green Service cloth, and cases of Encyclopædias and works on Naval history. The walls were adorned with photographs of the various submarines which had been attached to the ship at different times, and formed quite an interesting feature in themselves.
At present the Parentis was depot ship to a large number of boats, and as each boat had three officers, the Marine servants were usually kept pretty busy at cocktail time.
Youngish men mostly, the submarine captains would meet at this hour of the day and discuss ‘shop’ to an extent that maddened the more junior members of the mess. Little scraps of conversation they were, but not without meaning to the uninitiated, and based on the experience of men who sometimes carried their lives in their hands. Periscopes, stern-dives, and the latest class of boat were discussed, coloured with the charm of personal experiences and scraps of idle chaff.
‘The ‘Subs’ of the boats were either junior Lieutenants or senior Sub-Lieutenants. Earnest, talkative youths, very much alive to the responsibilities of their positions, and the burdens attaching thereto, who ordered their drinks with the abandon of those who have done a hard day’s work and ‘dare do all that may become a man.’
The remainder of the mess was composed of the depot officers: paymaster, surgeon, engineer, and watch-keepers, and the navigators of the submarines. These latter were all Lieutenants of the Royal Naval Reserve, whose ages ranged anywhere from twenty-three to forty; men from the great steamship lines of the Mercantile Marine, who had answered the country’s call at the outbreak of the war.