"I know," chipped in another N.C.O. "It was the Padre."
"The Padre!" exclaimed half a dozen voices. "Our Padre been scrapping?"
"Hardly!" was the reply. "He shares a two-bunk berth with the Lieutenant. Padre has, or had, the upper bunk, and he tops the scale at sixteen stone. I don't insinuate, mind you, that any of the fellows tampered with the ironwork, but all the same the bunk collapsed, and our Padre subsided heavily upon poor little Nicholson."
"We'll get the company poet to write up a special stanza and recite it at the concert," declared Fortescue. "Sort of object lesson on the way our Padre tackles sin."
The men, remembering that the Lieutenant's initials were S.I.N., laughed uproariously. These impromptu concerts gave them poetic licence to joke at the expense of their officers. The latter, too, were quite used to that sort of thing. In fact they enjoyed it. Even the popular Padre found these entertainments a welcome antidote to the dull business of censoring letters.
The concert--as far as it went--was a huge success. According to The Deep Sea Roll, the Thirty-somethingth's magazine, the opening items and the honorary reporter's notes were as follows:--
"A duet by the brothers Mac. I thought they would never finish, due mainly to Macdonald, who had his Scotch blood up and his bagpipes in good wind."
"Sergeant Thomson next stepped into the ring and gave 'Thora' a slap up. It was a pity he lost his teeth, but, thank goodness, he has not lost his voice."
"Tiny Anderson's voice was like his size--tremendous. 'Asleep in the Deep' was his song. I thought he was asleep at one part of it."
There was no lack of enthusiasm on the part of the audience. The men, packed like sardines in a barrel, filled the mess-deck almost to suffocation, their boisterous applause increasing in volume as item succeeded item in quick succession.