"Possess your soul in patience for another six hours, Alan, and your curiosity will, I hope, be satisfied," replied Mr. Armitage.
"Now," he added briskly, as the boat ran alongside the Hard, "Flemming and Woodleigh, you had better be baggage-guard until we can find some sort of conveyance to get the gear to the station. I'll go to the post office. Anyone else coming?"
Everyone wanted to send off letters to relatives.
"Hang on a minute, Peter," said Flemming. "I want to scribble a line. You might post it for me."
"I know a better plan," replied the Patrol-leader. "I'll buy picture post cards for Woodleigh and you, and you can post them on the way to the railway station."
About three o'clock in the afternoon the Sea Scouts arrived at Great Yarmouth. Mr. Armitage was now on familiar ground, and the Rosalie was quickly located lying alongside a wharf above the swing-bridge.
At first sight she was not prepossessing.
She was a straight-stemmed craft with a short counter, schooner-rigged, her masts being set in "tabernacles", or vertical troughs of wood, to enable them to be lowered in the event of her having to pass under an immovable bridge. She had been grievously neglected. Her hull was painted "battleship grey", or rather the paint had been "slapped on" over her original coat of white. Her teak topsides and coamings were weather-worn and black with the combined action of salt water, rain, and sun. Her masts were painted the same hideous colour as the hull, and someone in a sudden fit of zeal had commenced scraping one and left the wood partly bare. The decks were black with dirt and coal-dust, and generally she bore an air of utter disrespectability.
"The old boat's been in Government service," explained the man in whose charge she had been left. "Nice li'l ole boat she be, but she's a regular beast in a seaway. Rolls like a barrel, she do. Here's the key, sir."
'Tween decks things were more hopeful. Although there was dirt and dust everywhere, everything was fairly dry.