Burgoyne accepted his dismissal with the best grace at his command. He had a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that Miss Vivian had heard of a joke at the Fourth Officer's expense, although she may not have known the actual facts.
Phil Branscombe had been appointed midshipman, R.N.V.R., a fortnight previous to the signing of the Armistice, although it wasn't his fault that he hadn't been so earlier. Consequently by the time he joined his M.-L. in a Western port hostilities were at an end. One evening towards the end of November the commander of the M.-L. flotilla was dozing in his cabin, when certain of the younger officers thought it would be a huge joke to pour pyrene down the stove-pipe and put out the fire in the Senior Officer's cabin. Stealthily they emptied the contents of the extinguisher and beat a retreat, chuckling at the mental picture of the commander's discomfiture when he awoke to find that the stove had gone out and himself shivering in the cold cabin.
Twenty minutes later a signalman conveying a message to the commander found him unconscious. The oxygen-destroying properties of the pyrene had not only extinguished the fire, but had been within an ace of suffocating the occupant of the cabin. Fortunately the commander recovered. The culprits were discovered, but their victim, convinced that it had not been their intention to drive matters to extremes, accepted their apologies and regrets. But the case did not end there. The Admiralty got to hear of it, and Branscombe and two of his fellow-midshipmen were summarily dismissed.
"That's what I did in the Great War, Miss Vivian," said Branscombe at the end of his recital. "You see, I wasn't one of the lucky ones. This ship saw some service. She was armed with six 4.7's, and made fourteen double trips across the Atlantic. Angus, our Chief Engineer, was on board her part of the time. He might tell you some yarns if you get the right side of him. Once we had some Yanks on board, and one of them asked him the same question that you asked me about what he did in the Great War. Angus simply looked straight at him. 'Ma bit', he replied."
"The Donibristle hasn't guns on board now, I suppose?" inquired the girl.
"No," replied Branscombe. There was a note of regret in his voice. "The Merchant Service doesn't want guns nowadays. I can show you where the decks were strengthened to take the mountings. No, there's no need for guns on this hooker."
But Fourth Officer Philip Branscombe was a bit out in his reckoning.
Meanwhile, as Burgoyne was making his way aft, he encountered Colonel Vivian laboriously climbing the companion-ladder.
"Thanks, Mr. Burgoyne," exclaimed the colonel, as the Third Officer stood aside to allow him to pass. "By the by, are you any relation to Major Burgoyne of the Loamshires?"
"My uncle," replied Alwyn.