Like a flash the situation became apparent to the sub. He remembered his great-coat—he seemed particularly unfortunate in the matter of great-coats, he thought. He had lent it to the stoker, and as a penalty he had been mistaken for the man he had rescued. The ludicrous side of the affair tickled him.
"A sub-lootenant?" queried the man incredulously. "Seems likely, eh? Either you're barmy, or else you're trying some little game on. Won't work, chum. Who's your raggie?"
"Raggie," in lower-deck parlance, is a term used to denote a man's particular pal. It was the sick-berth attendant's idea to get one of the ship's company whom the patient named to identify the fellow who was under the hallucination that he was one of the officers.
"Try Captain Holloway," suggested Terence. The man shook his head more in sorrow than in anger.
"It would go hard with you, chum, if I did," he remarked. "Your skipper wouldn't care to be bothered at this time o' night. 'Sides, he isn't here."
The patient in the next cot—of the crew of a destroyer that had been in some minor action—began to grow interested.
"Bill," he whispered in a stage aside, "'umour 'im. He's dotty. I knowed a chap once who looked just like 'im. He was as mad as a 'atter. He would 'ave it he was the Right 'Onerable Somebody. Got fair violent if you didn't believe 'im. So, 'umour 'im, says I."
Terence, overhearing these remarks, laughed.
"I don't claim to be anything so grand as a Right Honourable, my man," he said.
"Maybe, then, you're not so bad as the chap wot I was talking to the poultice-slapper about. 'E was sent to Yarmouth Loonatic Asylum, pore chap; maybe you won't need to be if you pulls yourself together," retorted the seaman, with brutal candour.