"I suppose so," he said a little clumsily, echoing thousands of other men. "It’s the universal wear just now, isn’t it? We fellows must make good while we can—and we’re all of us joining. Even Macrombie—you can’t have forgotten Macrombie—has got his rating, and is acting a P.O.T. on a Destroyer in the North Sea." Do you see the dour drunkard standing up, under the eye of the smart young inspecting Fleet Surgeon, naked save for the leather bootlace that held a battered silver locket round his harsh and swarthy scrag. "Your age? ..." "Ye micht ca’ me forty," said the subject, with caution. "I might, but I’d be a liar!" said the Fleet Surgeon, "so try again, my man!" "Ye micht pit twa to the forr-ty," came rumbling from the hairy chest. "And tack eight on to that," thus the Fleet Surgeon, tucking the hooked ends of the stethoscope into his ears, and deftly applying the microphone. "And then I’d be wide of the actual! Breathe deeply, will you!" The effort provoked a volley of coughs sounding like half-bricks pitched against the sides of an empty cistern and the Fleet Surgeon shook his head. "_Hough—hough—hough!_—why didna’ ye—hough! lat weel alane?" gasped Macrombie, with eyes blazing hell-fire through the moisture engendered by the cough. "Dinna ye ken I’ll never no’ be wanting to breathe deeply whaur ye’re needing to send me? There is nae room whatever for lung-play oot o’ the ordinar’," he added scornfully, "aboard ane o’ thae kittle, cranky, tinpot Destroyers!" "Hold out your hand!" commanded the arbiter of Destinies. He contemplated the extended member, wavering and fluttering like the indicator-needle on the dial of an atmospheric pressure-gauge. "Pretty wobbly, what?" he commented to the owner with the sarcastic inflection that advertised a keen advocate of Temperance. "Man, O! man!" broke from Macrombie in a harsh rattling whisper, desperate appeal flashing in his burnt-out eyes, "you that are young enough to be my son, tak’ me or leave me, ane or the tither—but shame me nae mair!" Telegraphists were sorely needed, so Macrombie of the racking hoast and the shaky hand was passed as fit for Service, and duty rated as Petty Officer Telegraphist aboard one of the contemned tin-pots.