"Patting your 'tummy', Orphan; that was cheek if you like! and the Sub didn't like it either."
The Pimple was very deferential to the Sub—rather too much so; what the Sub did and what he said made up most of the Pimple's daily existence. "He'd like us to take it out of the China Doll, wouldn't he?"
"Don't be an ass. Let the China Doll alone—it's too beastly wet and cold to bother about him. What about that cake you 'sharked' off the table?" So the Pimple, ever ready to ingratiate himself with anyone, produced a big wedge of gun-room cake out of his greatcoat pocket, and the two of them, crouching under the weather screens, munched away silently.
It was so dark that they could not see the look-out man, who was holding the brim of his sou'wester over his eyes to shield him from the rain and the spray, and trying to pierce the blackness of the stormy night in front of him. Both snotties were startled by a sudden cry from him: "Something a-'ead, sir! on the starboard bow, sir!" Another look-out also spotted something; everyone tried to see it; the officer of the watch dashed to the end of the bridge and peered through his night-glasses; the gunner's mate, down below, could be heard shouting to the guns' crews to "close up"; the breeches of the guns snapped to as they were loaded; and the Orphan, stuffing the remnants of the cake in his pocket, scrambled down the ladder.
"There it is, sir! There! there!—I can see it!' came excitedly out of the darkness. Everyone thought of submarines.
"Just like one, sir!" a signalman bawled to the officer of the watch, who yelled to the Quartermaster "hard-a-port", and rushed into the wheel-house to see that he did it.
At that moment a bobbing light began flickering out of the darkness ahead—a signal lamp.
"It's the challenge, sir," the signalman shouted.
"All right; reply; bring her on her course, Quartermaster. Starboard your helm, hard-a-starboard!" shouted the officer of the watch coolly; and as the Achates' bows swung back again, she swerved past a long, black object down below in the water, with its twittering signal light tossed about like a spark from a chimney on a dark night, and by that faint light they could just see the outline of three funnels before the light was shut off and everything disappeared.
It was only a patrolling destroyer. One could not see her rolling, or the seas breaking over her, but one could realize the horrible discomfort aboard her.