“Perhaps you would prefer me to state it in private?”
“Not at all. We are all in the same boat here.”
“Well, then,” Lieutenant Cotway looked round with a smile in which there was a trace of deprecation, “the Admiral had heard there were some British sympathisers with the insurgents up here, and he sent me—unofficially—to see whether it was true, and if so, to clear them out.”
“By a judicious combination of persuasion and physical force, I suppose? It didn’t strike him that you might find yourselves slightly outnumbered?”
“Why, we had no idea, of course—— I mean, he expected to find the sort of people who come out and spend two days in an insurgent camp, and then go home and shriek against the Roumis in the papers. The sort of people that the insurgents wouldn’t be particularly anxious to keep, you know. But this is a pretty big thing.”
“You flatter us!” said Zoe ironically.
“Well,” said the sailor, with a good-humoured laugh, “it’s so big that I could hardly expect you to leave it and come down meekly to Skandalo with me to be deported.”
“Hardly,” agreed Maurice.
“But old Point Seven will never believe how big it is,” said Mr Suter meditatively. Lieutenant Cotway frowned, and repeated the remark in more decorous language.
“There will be some difficulty in convincing the Admiral how firmly you have established yourself up here, Prince. I suppose it’s quite beyond the bounds of possibility that you and he should meet face to face and hold a palaver?”