“But I never tell tales against myself,” Mr. Alter answered. At this moment, Reedham, who had disappeared quickly and discreetly when Mr. Alter handed his card to the officer of the watch, and who had been engaged meanwhile in awakening a somnolent Gunroom, and urging its occupants to “clear up some of the mess and stow away the _Winning Post_” before the arrival of a literary Order of Merit--Reedham returned panting to the quarter-deck, and gazed over the side while he attempted to regain his breath and to look as if he had never been absent. His face was still pink as a result of his exertion when he was ordered, as he had known he would be, to escort Mr. Alter to the Gunroom. But they had not gone far together when Mr. Baring called him back. “Reedham!... One moment. Excuse me, Mr. Alter.... Look here Reedham,” Mr. Baring continued, while Mr. Alter waited out of earshot in the starboard tunnel, “have you warned the snotties down below?” “Yes, sir.” “Gunroom tidy? Look decent?” “Pretty tidy, sir. Hadn’t much time, sir.” “That’s all right. The best way with the British Public is to let them see what’s good for them, you know.... And, Reedham, just drop a hint to some of the snotties to--er--moderate their language a bit, and not to offer him too many drinks. It might create a bad impression. You can never tell with these writing chaps--even the most respectable of them.” “I imagine,” said Mr. Alter slowly, as he and Reedham went down into the Chest Flat, “that the officer of the watch is also the officer in charge of midshipmen?” “Yes,” Reedham answered, “he is. But what made you think so?” The Gunroom had been transformed to greet the Almighty Pen and the gold-laced visitors who might be expected to accompany it. No one was asleep. There were no glasses on the table. Howdray was reading, in the second volume of a Manual of Seamanship, the eighty-seventh page--the page at which he had happened to open it. Elstone was working industriously, with a pen which he dipped from time to time into an empty Indian ink bottle, at a log-sketch which Dyce had completed for him a week ago.