Bubbles, whose hammock was slung next to his, had gone to sleep again. He prodded him feverishly. "Submarines, Bubbles! All hands on deck! Get your swimming-collar!" he squeaked.
"Oh, bother! Curse you!" grunted Bubbles. "You aren't pulling my leg? Oh, hang it!" he grumbled, as he saw all the other snotties tumbling into their clothes, officers coming out of their cabins into the dark, crowded "half-deck", and heard the banging down of armoured hatches. "I do hate this beastly war. Breakfast at seven; then a cold bath at two in the morning. Beastly!"
The China Doll went up on the dark quarter-deck and hunted round for someone to talk to. His teeth were chattering and his knees were trembling—it was so dark and cold.
"What's happened?" he asked, stumbling across Uncle Podger.
"Something blown a hole in the Aennie Rickmers, and the Sub's gone across in the cutter to bring back our wounded."
"What did it? Was it a submarine?"
"Don't bother; no one knows. Come and have a look at her."
He took him round to the other side of the turret, into the wind, and out in the pitch-black night they could just make out the darker mass of the hydroplane ship, apparently tipped up by the stern, and a signal-lamp flashing on board her. They heard shrieks coming from her, and the China Doll's heart beat fearfully fast.
Near them, on the quarter-deck, the querulous voice of Dr. O'Neill, the Fleet-Surgeon, was lamenting that he had ever come to sea. "Mother of Moses!" he groaned, as "Glaring Gertrude" turned her light towards the Achates and everybody's face showed up, and the turret and the superstructure, the masts and the funnels, stood out clearly against it. "Mother of Moses, they'll torpedo us next if we wait here much longer! They must see the ship every time that beastly thing passes across us."
As "Glaring Gertrude" swept away, and everybody and everything was left in darkness again, the Fleet-Paymaster's loud, cheery voice bellowed: "Cheer up, old 'C.D.'; if you have to take to the water, you won't find any whisky in it!"