“Oh, they spun me the usual yarns about the water being thick with ’em, and asked me to help; but I couldn’t stop. The cutter’s stern-sheets were piled up with mines, like lobster-pots, and from the way the soldiers handled ’em I thought I’d better get out. So did Uncle Newt. He didn’t like it a bit. There were a couple of shots fired at something just as we cleared the Head, and one dropped rather close to him. (These duck-shoots in the dark are dam’ dangerous y’know.) He lit up at once—tail-light, head-light, and side-lights. I had no more trouble with him the rest of the night.”
“But what about the report that you sawed off the steam-launch’s boat-hook?” Tegg demanded suddenly.
“What! You don’t mean to say that little beast of a snotty reported it? He was scratchin’ poor old Ethel’s paint to pieces. I never reported what he said to me. And he called me a damned amateur, too. Well! Well! War’s war. I missed all that fishing-party that time. My orders were to follow Uncle Newt. So I followed—and poor Ethel without a dry rag on her.”
Winchmore refilled his glass.
“Well, don’t get poetical,” said Portson. “Let’s have the rest of your trip.”
“There wasn’t any rest,” Winchmore insisted pathetically. “There was just good old Ethel with her engines missing like sin, and Uncle Newt thumping and stinking half a mile ahead of us, and me eating bread and Worcester sauce. I do when I feel that way. Besides, I wanted to go back and join the fishing-party. Just before dark I made out Cordelia—that Southampton ketch that old Jarrott fitted with oil auxiliaries for a family cruiser last summer. She’s a beamy bus, but she can roll, and she was doing an honest thirty degrees each way when I overhauled her. I asked Jarrott if he was busy. He said he wasn’t. But he was. He’s like me and Nelson when there’s any sea on.”
“But Jarrott’s a Quaker. ’Has been for generations. Why does he go to war?” said Maddingham.
“If it comes to that,” Portson said, “why do any of us?”
“Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Winchmore replied with deep feeling. “The Quaker religion (I’m not a Quaker, but I’m much more religious than any of you chaps give me credit for) has decided that mine-sweeping is lifesaving. Consequently”—he dwelt a little on the word—“the profession is crowded with Quakers—specially off Scarborough. ’See? Owin’ to the purity of their lives, they ‘all go to Heaven when they die—Roll, Jordan, Roll!’”