"Shall we go over the ship?" he inquired.
The children agreed eagerly. He stalked along in front of them, hands in jacket pockets. He took them into the neat dining-room, opening and shutting the port-holes to show how they worked, then into the smoking-room, large, long, and book-lined with the volumes of his naval library. Then up the rubber-covered stairs and along the narrow white passage with small doors in a row on either side. A man in more white drill was polishing the brass handles, there was the clean acrid smell of brass polish; Joan wondered if they polished brass all day at Glory Point, this was such a queer time to be doing it, at four in the afternoon. The admiral threw open one of the doors while the children peered over his shoulder.
"This is my sleeping cabin," he said contentedly.
The little room was neat as a new pin; through the open port-holes came the sound and smell of the sea—thud, splash, thud, splash, and the mournful tolling of a bell buoy. The admiral's bunk was narrow and white, Joan thought that it looked too small for a man, like the bed of a little child, with its high polished mahogany side. Above it the porthole stood wide open—thud, splash, there was the sea again; the sound came with rhythmical precision at short intervals. Milly had found the washstand, it was an entrancing washstand! There was a stationary basin cased in mahogany with fascinating buttons that you pressed against to make the water flow; Milly had never seen buttons like this before, all the taps at Leaside turned on in a most uninteresting way. Above the washstand was a rack for the water bottle and glass, and the bottle and glass had each its own hole into which it fitted with the neatest precision. The walls of the cabin were white like all the others in this house of surprises, white and glossy. Thud, splash, thud, splash, and a sudden whiff of seaweed that came in with a breath of air.
Joan thought, "Oh it is a truthful house, it would never deceive you!" Aloud she said, "I like it!"
The admiral beamed. "So do I," he agreed.
"I like it all," said Joan, "the noises and the smell and the whiteness. I wish we lived in a ship-house like this, it's so reassuring."
"Reassuring?" he queried; he didn't understand what she meant, he thought her a queer old-fashioned child, but his heart went out to her.
"Yes, reassuring; safe you know; you could trust it; I mean, it wouldn't be untruthful."
"Oh, I see," he laughed. "I built it," he told her with a touch of pride; "it was entirely my own idea. The people round here think I'm a little mad, I believe; they call me 'Commodore Trunnion'; but then, dear me, everyone's a little mad on one subject or another—I'm mad on the sea. Listen, Miss Joan! Isn't that fine music? I lie here and listen to it every night, it's almost as good as being on it!"