After being second-in-command of a crack M.L., McIntosh felt no violent enthusiasm over his job—to take the two cumbersome craft to a strange port eighty odd miles along the coast. At a maximum speed of five knots, it meant a sixteen hours' run; but McIntosh, knowing the vagaries of the X-lighters' motors, refrained from being sanguine on the matter.
It was one of the jobs that fall to all branches of the Navy. With a strange crew, and not having navigated a lighter before, McIntosh was taking on "some stunt." He had charts and navigating instruments, but he would have felt easier in his mind had he possessed "local knowledge" of this part of the coast. On an M.L., where he was under a competent officer, navigation was fairly simple as far as the Sub was concerned; but now the whole responsibility of getting his charges safely into port rested on his shoulders.
It was the morning of von Preussen's visit to Auldhaig. The fog had dispersed. In its wake had sprung up a fresh southerly breeze, which in turn gave indications of decreasing in velocity before noon.
Stopping to give his final instructions to the coxwain of No. 6, and impressing upon him to follow at a cable's length in her consort's wake, McIntosh boarded the lighter which for the nonce was to be the leading craft. Already the twin heavy oil engines were "warming up," making the decks quiver, and filling the air with oil-laden smoke.
Making his way aft to the rough wooden hut that served as a wheel-house, the Sub gave the signal to the engine-room staff to "stand by."
"Rummiest packets that ever sailed under the White Ensign," he soliloquised, as his eye caught sight of the dingy bunting floating from the yard-arm of the lighters' stumpy masts. "Ah, well; it's all in a day's work."
He gave the telegraph lever another jerk.
"Cast off!" he shouted.
Sluggishly the deeply-laden barge gathered way. She had a freeboard of barely ten inches—a fact that portended wet decks before long.
Having satisfied himself that No. 6 was following, McIntosh devoted his attention to shaping a course out of harbour, undergoing a dozen mental thrills as his unwieldy packet scraped past buoys and showed a decided tendency to commit suicide across the steel stems of a couple of anchored cruisers.