“That’s all right. If you’ll come down below, we may get some grub.”
We descended a naked steel ladder to a steel-beamed tunnel, perhaps twelve feet long by six high. Leather-topped lockers ran along either side; a swinging table, with tray and lamp above, occupied the centre. Other furniture there was none.
“You can’t shave here, of course. We don’t wash, and, as a rule, we eat with our fingers when we’re at sea. D’you mind?”
Mr. Moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked me over from head to foot and grinned. He was not handsome in any way, but his smile drew the heart. “You didn’t happen to hear what Frankie told me from the flagship, did you? His last instructions, and I’ve logged them here in shorthand, were”—he opened a neat pocket-book—”‘Get out of this and conduct your own damned manœuvres in your own damned tinker fashion! You’re a disgrace to the Service, and your boat’s offal.’”
“Awful?” I said.
“No—offal—tripes—swipes—ullage.” Mr. Pyecroft entered, in the costume of his calling, with the ham and an assortment of tin dishes, which he dealt out like cards.
“I shall take these as my orders,” said Mr. Moorshed. “I’m chucking the Service at the end of the year, so it doesn’t matter.”
We cut into the ham under the ill-trimmed lamp, washed it down with whisky, and then smoked. From the foreside of the bulkhead came an uninterrupted hammering and clinking, and now and then a hiss of steam.
“That’s Mr. Hinchcliffe,” said Pyecroft. “He’s what is called a first-class engine-room artificer. If you hand ’im a drum of oil an’ leave ’im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin’.”
Very leisurely, at the end of his first pipe, Mr. Moorshed drew out a folded map, cut from a newspaper, of the area of manœuvres, with the rules that regulate these wonderful things, below.