‘He’s given us a billet of our own. Under his wing too.’ An officer shot down on to the foc’sle, while the yeoman of signals, whose nose is that of a hawk, kept an unshut eye on the Flag.
‘Isn’t there a four-foot patch somewhere about here?’ said a calm and disinterested voice. The Navigator having brought her in did not need to wrestle with cables; and our anchors with their low, cramped davits are no treat.
‘We told ’em about our anchors in the Dockyard,’ said the bridge. ‘We told ’em so distinctly, and they said: “We’re very much obliged to you for the information, and we’ll make the changes you recommend—in the next boat of your class.” That’s what I call generosity.’
‘Does that ship always behave like that?’ I asked. From all three funnels of a high, stubby cruiser the smoke of a London factory insulted the clean air.
‘Oh, no; she’s only burning muckings like the rest of us. She’s our “chummy” ship. She’s a new type—she and the Furious. Fleet rams they call ’em. Rather like porcupines, aren’t they?’
The two had an air of bristling, hog-backed ferocity, strangely out of keeping with the normal reserve of a man-of-war.
The Blake, long and low, looked meek and polite beside them, but I was assured that she could blow them out of the water. Their own Captains, of course, thought otherwise.
ASHORE IN IRELAND
All Ireland was new to me, and I went ashore to investigate Castletown’s street of white houses, to smell peat smoke and find Dan Murphy, owner of a jaunting car and ancient friend of the ward-room. In this quest me and the Navigator mustered not less than half the male population of Cork County, the remainder being O’Sullivan’s; but we found Dan at last—old, grizzled, with an untameable eye, voluble and beautifully Celtic.
‘Will I meet ye to-morrow at Mill Cove at nine-thirty? I will. Here’s my hand an’ word on it. Will I dhrive ye to Glenbeg for the fishing? I will. There’s my hand an’ word on it. Do I mean it? Don’t I know the whole livin’ fleet, man an’ boy, for years?’