"Ahoy, there!" shouted a short, thick-set, jovial-looking officer clad in a salt-stained serge uniform. "Can you drop astern a couple of lengths?"
"Ay, ay," replied Peter, and in a very short time the Olivette's warps were cast off and the boat tracked aft along the quay.
When the Acacis—for that was the tramp's name—was safely berthed, the officer who had hailed the Olivette came aft.
"Thanks!" he exclaimed. "You Sea Scouts know your job, I can see."
"Thank you," replied Peter. "May we come aboard you and have a look round?"
"Right-o," was the reply.
The skipper of the Acacis—bound from Cardiff to Cherbourg and Le Havre—made the Sea Scouts right welcome. It was, for the majority of them, the first opportunity they had had of "looking over" a big vessel.
"Yes, it'll blow before night," the skipper observed in answer to Peter's question. "We struck it pretty bad off the Longships, and right across the Channel there was a tidy roll on. That generally means a bit of a blow. You'll be here for the best part of a week, I'll allow."
The Sea Scouts showed no enthusiasm over this piece of information. Flemming was positively downhearted.
"Look here," suggested the Acacis' Old Man, when he learnt of the unwelcome attentions of the Cherbourg gamins, "why not lie alongside of us? You'll get a tidy bit of coal-dust, but that's a jolly sight better than cabbage-stalks and dead cats dumped on your deck."