Uncle Podger and the Lamp-post stood waiting for the Chaplain, the Rev. Horace Gibbons; and when they saw his shoes and scarlet socks dangling from the lower end of the ammunition hoist from "B2" casemate in a helpless, pathetic way, they dashed to his assistance; each seized a foot and guided it to safety on top of a convenient motor-hoist, and as the Padre let go the ladder and jumped feebly, they softened his fall. This was always their first job, for he hated that rope-ladder and that hoist with a deadly hatred, and, most of all, hated falling those last few feet, suddenly dropping, as it were, from heaven, and appearing in an undignified manner among all the men there.
The Lamp-post and Uncle Podger dusted down the little pasty-faced Padre and put his hat on straight.
"Thank you so much! I'm afraid I've broken my pipe in that hoist."
"Hallo, Angel Gabriel!" grinned the Pay, as the three of them passed into the transmitting-room. "Paying a call in the infernal region?"
As they shut the felted door they shut out all the noise.
This transmitting-room was a tiny little place, perhaps fifteen feet long and five wide, with four camp-stools, and rows of telephones and brass indicator boxes with their little red and white figures showing through the slits in them. Voice-pipes, too, everywhere, and in one corner, over a camp-stool—Uncle Podger's camp-stool—projected an enormous brass voice-pipe with a gramophone-shaped end.
Every instrument had its label above it: Conning-tower—After Turret—Starboard 6-inch—Y group—X group—scores of them; and in front of the Padre's camp-stool was a little table, like a school table, with paper lying on it and a pencil chained to it.
"Nothing happened yet, sir," the ship's corporal sang out, as they closed the door and seated themselves on their camp-stools with their backs against the after bulkhead and the door.
Uncle Podger, sitting with his head in his gramophone trumpet, could hear people talking in the conning-tower. "Signal to the Swiftsure to stop engines"—that was Captain Macfarlane's clear, incisive voice; then the Navigator's infectious laugh, "The trawlers are safe, sir; out of range, sir. They've had the fright of their lives, sir."—"Port it is, sir," came the gruff voice of the quartermaster at the wheel. "Steady it is, sir."
He rang up the fore-control top, where the China Doll was perched, and a bell at his side tinkled. "What's going on, China Doll?" he called into his loud-speaking navyphone, giving the mouthpiece a shake.