“O God, save those poor beggars!” he had groaned out over and over, as the little red and black specks that were men bobbed about in the boiling surf. It was quite clear to him that they were shrieking, though the howl of the sleety gale had drowned their cries.
“Damn the old man! He’s done it, as he said he would!” he muttered, hugging his knees and blinking as the stinging tears came crowding, and a sob stuck in his throat. “And I used to chaff him for being such a thundering old Dodger! Gaw!” He shuddered and dropped his haggard young face into his grimy, chilblained hands.
He knew he could never again face his brother-officers. He knew he could never, never again go home. He roused himself out of a giddy stupor presently at the sound of voices. Two officers of the Fleet had taken refuge from the blizzard in a buttress-angle of the Fort wall, not far distant. They were talking about the wreck of The Realm, and, sheltered as they were from the wind, their voices reached the ear of Jowell’s son.
“It’s a gey guid thing for the Contractors,” said one man. “They’ve saved their bacon by letting the Army salt-pork and junk go to Davy Jones’s locker, ye ken!”
And his companion answered significantly:
“Supposing it ever was aboard!”
“Ay!—now I come to think of it,” said the first man, who had a North of the Tweed accent, “that was varra odd the way the port and starboard cables went ripping oot o’ her. Will we be getting any explanation of that circumstance, do ye suppose, later on?”
“Undoubtedly, if we wait until the Day of Judgment,” said the second speaker, who seemed a bit of a cynic. “And meanwhile—I’ll bet you a sovereign that more stuff will be proved to have gone down in her than ever could have been got into her holds. She’ll be the scapegoat of the Commissariat—and by Gad! they want one!”
Said the other man: