Ah! the delight of seeing the cold grey glance warm into sea-blue, the lean, eagle-face flash into smiles. For a little while yet he was hers, she told herself, as the hard hand gripped on hers that answered the swift fierce pressure, and her blood that the sickly chill of fear had stagnated, whirled on its crimson circle singing for joy. And then—a second glance, sweeping from the top to the toes of the tall manly figure, stopped the song.
"Alan! You—in khaki!"
"I suppose so," he said a little clumsily, echoing thousands of other men. "It's the universal wear just now, isn't it? We fellows must make good while we can—and we're all of us joining. Even Macrombie—you can't have forgotten Macrombie—has got his rating, and is acting a P.O.T. on a Destroyer in the North Sea."
Do you see the dour drunkard standing up, under the eye of the smart young inspecting Fleet Surgeon, naked save for the leather bootlace that held a battered silver locket round his harsh and swarthy scrag.
"Your age? ..."
"Ye micht ca' me forty," said the subject, with caution.
"I might, but I'd be a liar!" said the Fleet Surgeon, "so try again, my man!"
"Ye micht pit twa to the forr-ty," came rumbling from the hairy chest.
"And tack eight on to that," thus the Fleet Surgeon, tucking the hooked ends of the stethoscope into his ears, and deftly applying the microphone. "And then I'd be wide of the actual! Breathe deeply, will you!" The effort provoked a volley of coughs sounding like half-bricks pitched against the sides of an empty cistern and the Fleet Surgeon shook his head.
"Hough—hough—hough!—why didna' ye—hough! lat weel alane?" gasped Macrombie, with eyes blazing hell-fire through the moisture engendered by the cough. "Dinna ye ken I'll never no' be wanting to breathe deeply whaur ye're needing to send me? There is nae room whatever for lung-play oot o' the ordinar'," he added scornfully, "aboard ane o' thae kittle, cranky, tinpot Destroyers!"