The officers and men standing by tittered, for they well knew that Dr. O'Neill was a rabid teetotaler, and that "C.D." stood for "Converted Drunkard".
"I've never tasted the beastly stuff in my life, and know it you do!" snapped the Doctor furiously.
"Sadly lacking in the sense of humour you are, old C.D. What could be funnier than the whole seven hundred and fifty of us to go drifting ashore, under those salt-heaps, with swimming-collars round our necks?"
The Fleet-Surgeon stalked away, muttering angrily: "I hate fools."
By this time everything that could be done to make the Achates safe, in case she was attacked, had been done; water-tight doors and hatches were all closed; the Orphan was under the fore-bridge with his 6-pounder guns' crews; Bubbles was on the after-shelter deck with his; look-out men, all round the quarter-deck and fo'c'sle, peered into the darkness; the Sub had gone across to rescue the wounded men and, if need be, bring back everybody from the Aennie Rickmers, and all the officers and men who had no jobs to do stood waiting for whatever was going to happen.
To those who realized what might happen, and who thought it more than probable that whatever had fired a torpedo at the hydroplane ship—and by now everybody said it was a torpedo which had blown a hole in her—would come back out of the darkness, wait for that search-light to show up the Achates, and then take a pot-shot at her;—to those, that next hour-and-a-half was probably the most trying, and longest, in their lives. The wind blew so fiercely, and the water was so cold and dark, that there was very little chance of anyone being picked up once the Achates did sink, as there was every prospect of her doing—the poor old ship—once a torpedo got home.
Fortunately most people have not vivid imaginations, and to go into the battery during this time no one would have imagined that anything at all out of the way was happening. The men crowded there, just discernible by the blue-stained fighting-lights, walked up and down or stood in knots, smoking, and talking quietly about everything under the sun except what was going on. It was only when that hateful search-light passed along the ship, and one saw that practically all these men had their swimming-collars blown up round their necks, that one realized that they did know what the next few moments might bring them, and that, knowing this, they did not worry about it.
All had been done that could be done; of course, the Aennie Rickmers and their own wounded messmates aboard her could not be left in danger, and old "Yellow Beard", as they called Captain Macfarlane, was on the bridge up there above them.
So why bother?—and they didn't.
Uncle Podger, going up on the boat deck—really to get away from the China Doll, who would worry him with questions—stumbled against someone crawling on his hands and knees. The search-light sweeping round just then, he saw that it was Fletcher. "What are you hunting about there for?" he asked him.