For'ard she carried a 3-inch quick-firer. In the wake of the gun-mounting rose the wheel-house, surmounted by a small but powerful searchlight. Her single mast supported a complex array of wireless gear and a cross-yard with necessary signalling halyards. On the slightly raised deck-house was a dinghy in chocks, the davits being swung inboard. The boat was made of thin sheet iron, with water-tight compartments fore and aft and was sufficiently light to enable two hands to haul her up and down a beach. Judging by the dents and bulges in the dinghy's sides she had already been called upon to do useful work.
Right aft fluttered the White Ensign, an emblem under which few if any, of the motor-boat officers ever dreamt of sailing prior to the eventful August, 1914.
On either side and slightly in advance of the ensign staff, M.-L. 4452, like a hornet, carried her sting in her tail; for here were two powerful depth charges, capable of shattering the plating of a U-boat within a radius of fifty or sixty yards from the source of the explosion.
Below, the M.-L. was provided with ample accommodation—far more than the casual outside observer would give her credit for.
The crew, consisting of seven hands, were berthed for'ard. Then came the store rooms and wireless and hydrophone rooms. Abaft were the galleys, the ward-room one opening into the officers' living quarters.
The ward-room was a picture of cosiness. The M.-L.'s skipper had seen to that, for he had been sufficiently long in the Service to know the ropes. A few gallons of white enamel, drawn from the dockyard store, had worked wonders on the walls and ceiling of the ward-room, while the beams and timbers had been painted a dark brown to represent oak. The result was that the place resembled the interior of an old-fashioned half-timbered house, while, to carry out the scheme, the electric lamps were encased in cardboard, cut in the fashion of eighteenth-century lanterns.
Opening out of the ward-room were the two-bunked sleeping quarters for the officers, also enamelled tastefully and effectively. At the present time these were in a somewhat disordered state, oilskins, sea-boots, and pilotcoats dumped promiscuously, bearing a silent testimony to the fact that M.-L. 4452 had encountered heavy weather in the Straits of Dover.
Frank Farnborough, lieutenant and skipper of the M.-L., was a tall, slimly-built man of twenty-five. In civil life he was a consulting engineer, who was just beginning to make a name for himself when war broke out. His chief pastime was yachting, and in his little weatherly nine-ton yawl he had visited and was well acquainted with every port and haven between the Humber and the Lizard, and had a nodding acquaintance with the Dutch and Belgian coast and that of France from Dunkirk to Brest.
On the formation of the Motor Boat Reserve he had joined on as an ordinary deckhand, but it was not long before his experience and ability gained him a commission.
His sub, Guy Branscombe, has already been introduced.