I always feel overawed at the Admiralty—merely being in the same building with their "Lordships" is enough to overawe any humble lieutenant—so I meekly followed the porter into a waiting-room, pacing up and down restlessly till he came back again, beckoning me with a confidential air. "'E'll see you, if you step this way. 'E is in a middling good temper this morning—ain't 'ad many to worry 'im."
My interview with Mr. Copeland was short and sharp.
"What do you want?" he said curtly, more or less as if I was a pickpocket or a beggar asking for a penny.
"I hear there's a vacancy for a lieutenant in the Persian Gulf. I'm Martin—Paul Reginald Martin of the Russell, four years' seniority next May—and I want to go there. My late captain gave me this for the Second Sea Lord;" and I handed him the envelope with the pencil note: "Give this chap the job if you can", and his signature.
The secretary glanced at it, threw it on his desk, and looked at me suspiciously. "Yes, yes! I don't know how he came to hear of it. Collingwood, of the Bunder Abbas, has died of sunstroke. Quite right! quite right! I'll put your name down for her—if you wish."
"Please!" I said.
"Do you know what the job is?" he asked, as if, did I know, I should not be so keen to go.
"Not in the least," I answered; "and I don't mind, so long as I can get abroad and out of the Channel Fleet."
He smiled unpleasantly. "It's a patrolling job, and a lonely one."
He said this as though—officially—he ought to warn me, though—individually—he didn't care a button whether I went or not.