“Is this it? _‘Overborne by his superior’s causeless suspicion, the Navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of my captain and sobbed. A disgusting and maudlin reconciliation followed. The argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel, crapulous’_ (that means drunk, I think, Mr. Pyecroft), _‘shouting. It appeared that my captain would chenaler’_ (I don’t know what that means, Mr. Pyecroft) _‘to the Cape. At the end, he placed a sailor with the sound’_ (that’s the lead, I think) _‘in his hand, garnished with suet.’_ Was it garnished with suet?” “He put two leadsmen in the chains, o’ course! He didn’t know that there mightn’t be shoals there, ’e said. Morgan went an’ armed his lead, to enter into the spirit o’ the thing. They ’eaved it for twenty minutes, but there wasn’t any suet—only tallow, o’ course.” “‘_Garnished with suet at two thousand metres of profundity. Decidedly the Britannic Navy is well guarded_.’ Well, that’s all right, Mr. Pyecroft. Would you mind telling me anything else of interest that happened?” “There was a good deal, one way an’ another. I’d like to know what this Antonio thought of our sails.” “He merely says that ‘_the engines having broken down, an officer extemporised a mournful and useless parody of sails_.’ Oh, yes! he says that some of them looked like ‘_bonnets in a needlecase_,’ I think.” “Bonnets in a needlecase! They were stun’sles. That shows the beggar’s no sailor. That trick was really the one thing we did. Pho! I thought he was a sailorman, an’ ’e hasn’t sense enough to see what extemporisin’ eleven good an’ drawin’ sails out o’ four trys’les an’ a few awnin’s means. ’E must have been drunk!” “Never mind, Mr. Pyecroft. I want to hear about your target-practice, and the execution.” “Oh! We had a special target-practice that afternoon all for Antonio. As I told my crew—me bein’ captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though I’m a torpedo man now—it just showed how you can work your gun under any discomforts. A shell—twenty six-inch shells—burstin’ inboard couldn’t ’ave begun to make the varicose collection o’ tit-bits which we had spilled on our deck. It was a lather—a rich, creamy lather! “We took it very easy—that gun-practice. We did it in a complimentary ‘Jenny-’ave-another-cup-o’ tea’ style, an’ the crew was strictly ordered not to rupture ’emselves with unnecessary exertion. This isn’t our custom in the Navy when we’re _in puris naturalibus_, as you might say. But we wasn’t so then. We was impromptu. An’ Antonio was busy fetchin’ splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin’ ’em down the ventilators. There must ’ave been four inches in the bilges, I should think—wardroom whisky-an’-soda.