With the commissioning of 0916, Osborne for the first time assumed full responsibility as the skipper of a command. Used, since his entry into the Merchant Service, to the huge bulk of a steamer, he might have found the quick, lively motion of the sixty-footer decidedly awkward, had it not been for his previous experiences on board an eight-ton yacht. Nevertheless the handling of a twenty-six knotter, especially in a crowded harbour, required considerable skill combined with a steady nerve.
"It's the first few hours that count," confided the Lieutenant to his subordinate and chum Webb, as the patrol-boat prepared to cast off for a preliminary run into the open water of the Mediterranean. "I remember a chief officer in the Royal British and Pacific—a fellow with forty years' experience. His Company gave him command of one of their tugs—a sort of comfortable home billet to fill in the rest of his time. Hang it if he didn't run full tilt into a caisson the very first trip, battered the face of the caisson like an old tin can, and buckled the bows of the tug till they resembled a concertina! That little bust-up cost the Company a cool ten thousand pounds."
Fully equipped with stores, provisions, and munitions, and carrying six hundred gallons of petrol, No. 0916 stole cautiously towards the mouth of the harbour. Not until St. Elmo Point was broad on the port quarter did Osborne give the order for full speed ahead.
With a jerk the powerfully engined craft leapt forward. It gave Webb the sensation of being on a lift that had been started too suddenly. With the spray flying in silvery cascades on either side of her knife-like bow, the patrol-boat cut through the water at a dizzy speed, yet docile to the touch of the helmsman's hand.
Suddenly a nerve-racking jar shook the frail craft. Her starboard propeller was still running normally, tending to thrust her head to port, while the port propeller, having struck some wreckage, had been "brought up", stopping the motor almost dead.
"Fouled something, by Jove!" ejaculated Osborne. "Be sharp there, Wilkins. See if there's anything round the blades. Hope to goodness they're not 'stripped'."
"No fear of that, sir," replied the man addressed. "The blades have held, or the motor would have started to race. I see it, sir," he added, as he leant over the broad transome and peered into the limpid water. "It's a length of rotten grass rope round the boss as tight as a chunk of metal."
The Lieutenant also surveyed the cause of the mishap. Round and round the port propeller, and "laid" as evenly as rope round a drum, was a length of two-inch grass line. About twenty feet of this still trailed astern, terminating in a piece of painted wood.
"Some boat's old mooring broken adrift," commented Osborne. "Horrible nuisance, to say the least of it."
"We can run back with the starboard engine, and get the dockyard divers to clear it," observed Webb. "Fortunately we're not so very far off."