"Well, good luck!" exclaimed McIntosh.
Kenneth smiled sourly.
"Good luck!" he echoed bitterly. "Nothin' doin', I'm afraid. It's out nosing through the fog, seeing nothing and doing nothing. Haven't had so much as a sniff at a strafed U-boat yet, and don't seem like doing so until the end of the war—whenever that comes off."
"Sooner the better as far as I'm concerned," said McIntosh. "I'm fed up to the back teeth absolutely."
"Think so?" asked Meredith quietly. "From a purely personal point of view, we'll be jolly sorry when the war is over. Most of us will be wishing ourselves back in the M.L.'s before many weeks have passed."
"I'll risk it," rejoined Jock. "Give me the piping times of peace any old day—s'long as we win, which we're bound to do. Hello! here's Wakefield. Now the fun's about to commence. I'll hook it."
And with a friendly gesture of greeting to the returning officer commanding H.M.M.L. 1071, McIntosh leapt over the rail, crossed the deck of an intervening craft, and ascended the accommodation-ladder of the parent ship Hesperus.