We were at it again soon after sunrise, looking at every lump that came aboard, and some time after breakfast, whilst we were having a stand-easy, three destroyers came slowly in, flying a funny flag, which none of us had seen before, but which the signalman told me was the Patagonian.
We could not help laughing, for the first one was towing both the others, and one of these had a great list to port. It was a very comical sight. Hopkins borrowed my glass. "I reckon that ain't much of an advertise for the man who built those craft," he said in his funny Yankee drawl; nor was it, for they had evidently broken down.
Well, we got all our coal in by noon, had an hour for dinner, and then were hard at it cleaning down. It's really not bad fun, when you are horribly coal-dusty and it's jolly hot, to paddle about in bare feet, with your trousers tucked up above your knees, and the fire-hoses splish-splashing on the deck and washing the coal dust away—you get very wet, and it's jolly refreshing. I was bossing the quarter-deck, and the old quarter-master and I were watching the newly arrived destroyers, now busily coaling.
"What's them colours, sir?" said the wiry old man. "I never see'd 'em afore, and I've been nigh twenty-four years at sea, man and boy."
"Patagonian," I answered, and he borrowed a telescope and looked at them.
"Sure, there's some dirty Chinamen on board that craft, sir. Look at their heads poking out of the engine-room 'atchway."
Sure enough, there were five or six unmistakable Chinese faces, and I could see one coiling his pigtail round his head.
Of course we had Chinese on the brain rather badly, and Dunning (we called him Suet Dumpling, because his name was Cyril—a sneaking, under-handed, little midshipman, who couldn't pull himself up once on the horizontal bar), who was standing by us, ran and told the lieutenant on watch what we had seen, just as if he'd made the discovery himself, and he was sent down to tell the Skipper.
Up came the Skipper, for he couldn't see the destroyers out of his stern-ports, and stood looking at them, with that ass, Suet Dumpling, grinning with importance just behind him. "Tell the Commander I want to see him in my cabin," said the Skipper, and went down below again with a very grim-looking face.
The Dumpling ran forward to find the Commander. Now the man who was using the hose was washing down the battery-screen, close to the battery door, and, just as the Dumpling was disappearing through it, I called out to the man, and he turned round with the hose in his hand, just as I wanted, Dumpling getting it all in his back—he had just shifted into a clean white tunic, too. He was pretty wild, for he knew I had done it on purpose, but didn't say anything, though I thought I had better not sleep in my hammock that night, lest he should cut me down.