Sedately, as if conscious of having modestly performed a gallant service, the mine-sweepers bore up for home, and once again the Calder was left to stand by her prize.
She was not long left alone. A number of motor patrol-boats came buzzing round like flies round a honey-pot. The work of transferring the German prisoners was quickly taken in hand. They were put on board the patrol-boats in batches of half a dozen. It saved the destroyer the trouble of putting into port when she was supposed to hold no communication with the shore.
The last of the motor-boats had brought up alongside the Calder when Sefton recognized the R.N.R. sub-lieutenant in charge as an old friend of pre-war days.
Algernon Stickleton was a man whose acquaintance with the sea was strictly limited to week-ends spent on board the Motor Yacht Club's headquarters--the ex-Admiralty yacht Enchantress--in Southampton Water. Given a craft with engines, he could steer her with a certain amount of confidence. Of navigation and the art of a mariner he knew little or nothing. Tides were a mystery to him, the mariner's compass an unknown quantity. In short, he was a marine motorist--the counterpart of the motor road-hog ashore.
Upon the outbreak of war, commissions in the R.N.R. motor-boat service were flung broadcast by the Admiralty at the members of the Motor Yacht Club, and amongst those who donned the pilot-coat with the gold wavy band and curl was Algernon Stickleton. At first he was given a "soft job", doing a sort of postman's work in Cowes Roads, until the experience, combined with his success in extricating himself, more by good luck than good management, from a few tight corners, justified the experiment of granting a commission to a comparatively callow marine motorist.
Then he was put through a rapid course of signalling and elementary navigation, and, having "stuck at it", the budding sub-lieutenant R.N.R. was sent to the East Coast on a motor-yacht with the prospect of being given a fast patrol-boat when deemed proficient.
Gone were those halcyon August and September days in Cowes Roads. He had to take his craft out by day and night, blow high or low. Boarding suspicious vessels in the open roadstead hardened his nerves and gave an unwonted zest to his work. At last he was doing something definite--taking an active part in the navy's work.
"My first trip in this hooker, old man," he announced to Sefton, indicating with a sweep of his hand the compact, grey-painted motor craft that lay alongside the destroyer's black hull. "A clinker for speed. She'd knock your craft into a cocked hat. It beats Brooklands hollow. Wants a bit of handlin', don't you know, but I think I brought her alongside very nicely, what?"
The last of the German prisoners having been received on board and passed below to the forepeak, Sub-lieutenant Stickleton prepared to cast off. Touching the tarnished peak of his cap, for months of exposure to all weathers had dimmed the pristine lustre of the once resplendent headgear, he gave the word for the motors to be started.
Then, with one hand on the steering-wheel, he let in the clutch.