"Why, she's hard and fast aground."
"M'yes," agreed Waynsford unconcernedly. "She spends most of her time like that, It's all right sleeping on board, unless she happens to take a list the wrong way. Then you've got to sort yourselves out of a horrible muddle on the cabin floor."
"What if you're wanted?" enquired Aubyn.
"We have to jolly well wait till she floats," answered his chum, with a grin. "It's a quiet berth, and heaps better than rolling all night in the open bay. We had one taste of it—nearly upset the whole crowd of us. Mind that ladder: it's horribly slippery."
Waynsford indicated a perpendicular iron ladder, its lowermost end hidden in black mud, over which the rising tide was slowly advancing.
Throwing his portmanteau to one of the crew, who, as the result of long practice, deftly caught the heavy article, Terence descended the fifteen feet of ladder and stepped across the intervening space between the water and the motor-boat's quarter.
"Here's your bunk," announced Waynsford, pointing to a cot swung against the side of the bin. "Nalder, my opposite number, sleeps on the port bunk."
"How about you?" asked Terence.
"I'm going to turn in on the floor for the next few nights," replied Waynsford. "I'm used to it. You see, we've another boat for actual duty purposes in fine weather. She's smaller and handier. We use 'Lonette' mostly as a kind of parent ship. Now, I'll get the boy to bring the grub in. Fire away and let's have all the news."
During the rest of the day while daylight lasted Waynsford piloted his chum round the Queen of Watering Places, taking him up to the ruined castle and introducing him to some officers of Kitchener's Army whose acquaintance he had recently made.