“I merely wished to report that she is still continuin’ to go, Sir.”
“Right-O! Can we whack her up to fifteen, d’you think?”
“I’ll try, Sir; but we’d prefer to have the engine-room hatch open—at first, Sir.”
Whacked up then she was, and for half an hour was careered largely through the night, turning at last with a suddenness that slung us across the narrow deck.
“This,” said Mr. Pyecroft, who received me on his chest as a large rock receives a shadow, “represents the Gnome arrivin’ cautious from the direction o’ Portsmouth, with Admiralty orders.”
He pointed through the darkness ahead, and after much staring my eyes opened to a dozen destroyers, in two lines, some few hundred yards away.
“Those are the Red Fleet destroyer flotilla, which is too frail to panic about among the full-blooded cruisers inside Portland breakwater, and several millimetres too excited over the approachin’ war to keep a look-out inshore. Hence our tattics!”
We wailed through our siren—a long, malignant, hyena-like howl—and a voice hailed us as we went astern tumultuously.
“The Gnome—Carteret-Jones—from Portsmouth, with orders—mm—mm—Stiletto,” Moorshed answered through the megaphone in a high, whining voice, rather like a chaplain’s.
“Who?” was the answer.