"Yes, I'm sorry I'm leaving you all," replied Stratton. "But a fellow can't hang on here for ever. I mean to have a jolly time before I go, though."
At the end of August, Peter Stratton was entering the Merchant Service as a cadet. It was mainly owing to his previous training as a sea scout that the directors of one of the biggest steamship lines had accepted Peter.
With the prospect of losing their present Patrol Leader the Sea Scouts had decided to have a glorious cruise before he severed his connection with the Olivette. It was an elaborate scheme. They were to "go foreign", taking the Olivette across Channel to Havre and then up the Seine to Rouen, and possibly Paris.
Scoutmaster Armitage had readily fallen in with the idea. Not only would the execution of it give his lads another opportunity of seamanship in the Channel, it would afford them a chance of seeing a country not their own—a country that, during the last few years, has been closely united in aims and sympathies with her former enemy.
The Sea Scouts had received several letters from their Scoutmaster during his stay in town. In them he reported progress: how that he had already obtained the necessary charts, and had applied for passports and other forms that had to be produced before the crew of the Olivette landed on French soil.
Already Hepburn, the Troop photographer, had been busy on this account, taking individual photographs of each member of the Olivette's crew. True to their traditions, the Sea Scouts kept smiling, and in the resultant prints the smiles appeared to be grossly exaggerated. The "rogues' gallery", as Stratton termed it, had been duly sent off to Mr. Armitage, to adorn the necessary passports.
The Olivette being ready for launching, the Sea Scouts turned their attention to the dinghy, until the little tender glistened with varnish and the boat-house was festooned with her various fittings all wet with "best copal ".
"Bruin!" exclaimed Stratton, addressing the high-spirited animal. "Get outside. You're shaking your hairs all over the varnish. And please don't look so excited. You aren't coming this trip."
"What?" exclaimed Warkworth in dismay. "Bruin not coming? Why not, Peter? It wouldn't be the Olivette without Bruin."
"It'll have to be," retorted the Patrol Leader. "It's rough luck on Bruin, I admit; but if we took him to France he'd have to undergo six months' quarantine when we returned. It isn't worth it, old son, is it?"