As there was nothing to do while this work was going on, Fourgues gave shore-leave to the whole bunch, who did not need to be told twice, and invited me to dinner at the Welsh Lino! It bucked us up to drink cool beer and eat fresh bread. As we were in such a good temper, I read him your letter from Malta which I had had in my pocket ever since Liverpool. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, he said: “They are lucky on the _Auvergne_. With a young chap like that on the bridge the commander ought to be able to sleep easy.” Believe me, it made him sit up to learn that you watch in a turret and that when you set foot on the bridge you cease to call your soul your own! All that you wrote interested him greatly. Fourgues has an abrupt manner, appears rather off-hand, and talks little except to swear; but when he really unbosoms, there is nothing to do but listen, for I have observed that sooner or later you find he was in the right. “Your friend’s letter is not at all bad,” he said when I had finished. “He is interested in what he is doing and there’s nothing else worth while in the world, except home and family. But he seems to me to believe that the world was created on the _Auvergne_. That’s a way they have. And he believes in nothing but guns and dreams of nothing but the damage they’ll do. Very good, but we’ve still got to see if there’s going to be nothing but guns in this war at sea! By the way things are going, I have a sort of idea the Germans don’t figure it that way. As for the Austrians! Well, we shall see. Come on, Sonnie, let’s play English billiards and have a drink of whiskey. That’ll stretch our fingers and legs a bit. You can tell me what you think of the letter and see if we agree.” You know I’m a mug at billiards, especially on those enormous English billiard-tables. Fourgues gave me a hundred points in five hundred and won in seven breaks. I stood around and watched him do it and never saw him look so pleased. I tried to get in a few words about your letter, but he held the floor the entire time. I can’t tell you all he said, for it lasted an hour, but he asked a lot of questions and as I could not answer them--“Ask your gunner,” he would say, “this and that and the other,” chalking his cue. And so, old man, I obey, and you may answer direct to Fourgues if you wish. I shan’t be jealous and it will please him.