II.
That night the staff-room was full to overflowing when Dixie brought in the brass tray covered with cocktails.
The staff-room at this time was a small narrow place, so narrow that when anybody sat down everybody else fell over his feet. It was just big enough to hold, with a little packing, the heads of departments who were permanently attached to the station, and it had become their room by an unwritten law. But now all hands were crowded in.
Everybody was standing, there was no room to do anything else, and a fine of half a crown fell on anybody who sat on the arm of a chair, a rule enforced to preserve the integrity of the furniture.
The noise was prodigious. All were talking, nobody listening. A lad from up North had just finished telling me a yarn.
"The Orks are the limit," he said. "A Fritz ran ashore at half tide on a small island just outside Kirkwall in the Orkneys. The crew got busy and took all their ammunition and heavy gear ashore to lighten her and got her off next tide. It's a desolate place, the butt-end of nowhere, but an Ork saw them. He was sent for by the S.N.O.
"'Did you know they were Germans?' he was asked.
"'I thought they werena talking English,' the Ork replied cautiously.
"'Why did you not warn the coastguard at the telephone?'
"'They might ha' shot at me.'