"A fair day and a fair wind for all, thank God!" said Emanuel Pyecroft,
throwing back the cowl-like hood of his blanket coat. His face was pitted
with coal-dust and grime, pallid for lack of sleep; but his eyes shone
like a gull's.
"I told you you'd see life. Think o' the _Pedantic_ now. Think o' her
Number One chasin' the mobilised gobbies round the lower deck flats. Think
o' the pore little snotties now bein' washed, fed, and taught, an' the
yeoman o' signals with a pink eye wakin' bright 'an brisk to another
perishin' day of five-flag hoists. Whereas _we_ shall caulk an' smoke
cigarettes, same as the Spanish destroyers did for three weeks after war
was declared." He dropped into the wardroom singing:--
If you're going to marry me, marry me, Bill, It's no use muckin' about!
The man at the wheel, uniformed in what had once been a Tam-o'-shanter, a
pair of very worn R.M.L.I. trousers rolled up to the knee, and a black
sweater, was smoking a cigarette. Moorshed, in a gray Balaclava and a
brown mackintosh with a flapping cape, hauled at our supplementary funnel
guys, and a thing like a waiter from a Soho restaurant sat at the head of
the engine-room ladder exhorting the unseen below. The following wind beat
down our smoke and covered all things with an inch-thick layer of stokers,
so that eyelids, teeth, and feet gritted in their motions. I began to see
that my previous experiences among battleships and cruisers had been
altogether beside the mark.
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