"If you'd seen as much fighting as I have," Uncle Podger said solemnly—he'd only been a year in the Service, and seen none—"you'd——"
But he wasn't allowed to finish. They shouted:
"Dogs of war! Out, Accountant Branch!" and rolled him and the China Doll on the deck until Barnes banged the trap-door with the porridge-spoon to let them know that breakfast was ready.
At Malta there was another hurried coaling.
It was here they heard that the Bacchante, their chummy ship—a sister ship—the ship which had been next to them in the North Sea patrol—had already passed through Malta bound for the Dardanelles.
It was, of course, the Pimple who heard this first, and who climbed down into a coal lighter alongside to tell the Sub. The Sub, black and grimy, grinned. "We'll get a chance to knock spots out of them at 'soccer', somewhere or other," he said, joyfully rubbing some of the coal-dust on his sleeve over the Pimple's excited and fairly clean face.
"I hope they haven't found out about the sea-gulls," the Pimple said; but the Sub hadn't any more time to talk to him.
The sea-gull incident was rather a sore point with the Bacchante gun-room.
That ship had not yet fired a gun; the Achates had, and the Bacchante snotties were jealous and didn't believe it. All they could find out was that their rival's after 9.2-inch gun had fired at a submarine early one morning.
"What happened?" they would ask. "Did you hit it?"