"Was I?" the Captain's eyes twinkled. "Right you are! I'll be up again in a minute. I must get into dry things, or the Fleet Surgeon will be on my tracks"—and he disappeared below.
In half an hour the Achates was under way and steaming out into the Channel and the gale.
This ended her week's "rest"—the second "rest" since the war broke out, six months before. Now she was off again to the North Sea, with its constant gales, its mine-fields, its enemy submarines, and the grim delight of frequent hurried coalings.
It was not a very pleasing prospect.
CHAPTER II
The Gun-room of the "Achates"
Having seen his picket-boat safely landed in her crutches on the booms, the Orphan dived down below to the gun-room to dry himself in front of the blazing stove there.
The gun-room was a long, untidy place on the starboard side of the main-deck, just for'ard of the after 6-inch-gun casemate. A long table, covered with a red cloth, of the usual Service pattern, and rather more than usually torn and stained with grease, occupied most of the deck space, and was now laden with plates, cups and saucers, and, down the middle, in one gorgeous line, tins of jam, loaves of bread, fat pats of butter, and slabs of splendidly indigestible cake.
Long benches, covered with leather cushions, were fixed each side of it, whilst a few chairs, in various stages of decay, were drawn up round the stove and the upset copper coal-box. The after bulkhead of this sumptuous abode was occupied by midshipmen's lockers—rows of them one above the other—and from the half-open locker doors peeped boots and books, woollen helmets, sweaters, and safety waistcoats.
Along the foremost bulkhead was a corticine-covered sideboard with drawers for knives, forks, and spoons, cupboards for bottles, and a cosy gap for a barrel of beer. Above the sideboard, at either end of it, there were two little sliding-doors in the bulkhead, for the plates and food to be passed in from the pantry beyond, and for the dirty plates to be passed out. Between these two sliding-hatches, pictures of beautiful ladies taken from the last Christmas Number of the Sketch had been gummed on to the bare expanse of dirty-white paint, and gave an air of brightness and refinement to an otherwise somewhat depressing interior.