The _Agatha_
representing the last known rallying-point--or, as I should say, pivot-
ship of the evolution--it was decided to repair to the _Agatha_ at
conclusion of manoeuvre."
"Is there such a thing as one fine big drink aboard this one fine big
battleship?" "Can do, sir," said Pyecroft, and got it. Beginning with Mr.
Moorshed and ending with myself, junior to the third first-class stoker,
we drank, and it was as water of the brook, that two and a half inches of
stiff, treacly, Navy rum. And we looked each in the other's face, and we
nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss.
Moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a
captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke
over the green-bedded villas of Torquay to show us the magnitude of our
victory. There lay the cruisers (I have reason to believe that they had
made good their defects). They were each four hundred and forty feet long
and sixty-six wide; they held close upon eight hundred men apiece, and
they had cost, say, a million and a half the pair. And they were ours, and
they did not know it. Indeed, the _Cryptic_, senior ship, was signalling
vehement remarks to our address, which we did not notice.
"If you take these glasses, you'll get the general run o' last night's
vaccination," said Pyecroft. "Each one represents a torpedo got 'ome, as
you might say."
I saw on the _Cryptic's_ port side, as she lay half a mile away across the
glassy water, four neat white squares in outline, a white blur in the
centre.
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