"'Cause I'm on patrol to-night."
A terrible reverberation as the engine-room staff gave a preliminary run with the powerful motors corroborated Meredith's statement.
"But I'll do it now, if you like," he added. "You might ask Coles to bring along some seaming-twine and beeswax."
"Don't envy you, old thing," remarked Jock, returning with the required articles. "It's coming on thick. Personally, I'm jolly glad."
"Why?"
"The matter of those X-lighters," replied McIntosh. "We are handing them over to the R.A.F., and we've been expecting some one from that crush down to inspect 'em. And we look like going on expecting. 'Tany rate, the S.N.O.'s fed up with the lighters, so I've orders to take 'em round to Donnikirk and dump 'em on the R.A.F. people. Hanged if I want the job! Plugging along with four-knot barges isn't in my line, so I hope it's foggy."
Meredith nodded sympathetically, as his deft yet horny fingers waxed the twine and began the intricate task of "whipping" the broken pieces of the golf club. He little knew the part those unwieldy X-lighters would play in his subsequent experiences afloat.
The X-lighters were almost flat-bottomed barges, about a hundred feet in length and with a beam of roughly twenty feet. Originally built for work in connection with the naval river flotillas in Mesopotamia, they had found their way to a northern base. Then as a result of negotiations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, the former expressed their intention of turning over the lighters to the Royal Air Force for kite-balloon work.
Anxious to get rid of the cumbersome craft, which occupied a large amount of valuable mooring-space in Auldhaig Harbour, the Senior Naval Officer had decided not to await the long-delayed visit of the Air Force representative, but to send the barges round to their new base.
"You're quite right, old man," observed Meredith, when, the task of mending the golf club completed, he accompanied Jock McIntosh on deck. "It's going to be a beast of a night. An' No. 1071's doing the Outer Patrol stunt this time."