They drank velvety ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent development suited to James, who was in command of one of them. As to aeroplanes he said that as we'd now succeeded in imitating infernal birds and fishes--he supposed we'd soon bring off reptiles the kind of creature the modern young would be likely to represent best. "We shall soon have the police crawling on their bellies up and down the Strand hiding behind lamp-posts," finished Sir Peter. "Call that kind of thing science! It's an inverted Noah's Ark! That's what it is! And when you get it all going to suit yourself, there'll be another flood, and serve you all damned well right. I shall enjoy seeing you drown!" Winn replied that you had to fight with your head now and that people who fought with their fists were about as dangerous as stuffed rabbits. Sir Peter replied that in the end everything came down to blood, how much you'd got yourself and how much you could get out of the enemy. Lady Staines was slightly afraid of leaving them in this atmosphere, but at last she reluctantly withdrew to the hall, where she listened to the varying shades of Sir Peter's voice and decided they were on the whole loud enough to be normal. At eleven o'clock she and Winn between them assisted Sir Peter to bed. This was a sharp and fiery passage usually undertaken by the toughest of the gardeners. Winn however managed extraordinarily well. He insisted on occasional pauses and by a home truth of an appallingly personal nature actually silenced his father for the last half flight. Sir Peter breakfasted in his room. He had had a bad night. He wouldn't, as he explained to his wife, have minded if Winn had been a puny chap; but there he was, sound and strong, with clear hard eyes, broad, straight shoulders and a grip of iron, and yet Taylor, that little village hound of an apothecary, said once you had microbes it didn't matter how strong you were--they were just as likely to be fatal as if you were a narrow-chested epileptic. Microbes! The very thought of such small insignificant creatures getting in his way filled Sir Peter with fury. He had always hated insects. But the worst of it was in the morning he didn't feel angry, he simply felt chilled and helpless. His son was hit and he couldn't help him. It all came back to that. There was only one person who could help a sick man, and that person was his wife. Theoretically Sir Peter despised and hated women, but practically he leaned on his wife as only a strong man can lean on a woman; without her, he literally would not have known which way to turn. His trust in her was as solid as his love for a good stout ship. In every crisis of his life she had stood by his side, bitter tongued, hard-headed, undemonstrative and his as much as any ship that had sailed under his flag.