“Can do, sir,” said Pyecroft, and got it. Beginning with Mr. Moorshed and ending with myself, junior to the third first-class stoker, we drank, and it was as water of the brook, that two and a half inches of stiff, treacly, Navy rum. And we looked each in the other’s face, and we nodded, bright-eyed, burning with bliss. Moorshed walked aft to the torpedo-tubes and paced back and forth, a captain victorious on his own quarterdeck; and the triumphant day broke over the green-bedded villas of Torquay to show us the magnitude of our victory. There lay the cruisers (I have reason to believe that they had made good their defects). They were each four hundred and forty feet long and sixty-six wide; they held close upon eight hundred men apiece, and they had cost, say, a million and a half the pair. And they were ours, and they did not know it. Indeed, the _Cryptic_, senior ship, was signalling vehement remarks to our address, which we did not notice. “If you take these glasses, you’ll get the general run o’ last night’s vaccination,” said Pyecroft. “Each one represents a torpedo got ’ome, as you might say.” I saw on the _Cryptic’s_ port side, as she lay half a mile away across the glassy water, four neat white squares in outline, a white blur in the centre. “There are five more to starboard. ’Ere’s the original!” He handed me a paint-dappled copper stencil-plate, two feet square, bearing in the centre the six-inch initials, “G.M.” “Ten minutes ago I’d ha’ eulogised about that little trick of ours, but Morgan’s performance has short-circuited me. Are you happy, Morgan?” “Bustin’,” said the signalman briefly. “You may be. Gawd forgive you, Morgan, for as Queen ’Enrietta said to the ’ousemaid, _I_ never will. I’d ha’ given a year’s pay for ten minutes o’ your signallin’ work this mornin’.” “I wouldn’t ’ave took it up,” was the answer. “Perishin’ ’Eavens above! Look at the _Devolution’s_ semaphore!” Two black wooden arms waved from the junior ship’s upper bridge. “They’ve seen it.” “_The_ mote _on_ their neighbour’s beam, of course,” said Pyecroft, and read syllable by syllable: “‘Captain Malan to Captain Panke. Is—sten—cilled frieze your starboard side new Admiralty regulation, or your Number One’s private expense?’ Now _Cryptic_ is saying, ‘Not understood.’ Poor old _Crippy_, the _Devolute’s_ raggin’ ’er sore. ‘Who is G.M.?’ she says. That’s fetched the _Cryptic_. She’s answerin’: ‘You ought to know. Examine own paintwork.’ Oh, Lord! they’re both on to it now. This is balm. This is beginning to be balm. I forgive you, Morgan!” Two frantic pipes twittered. From either cruiser a whaler dropped into the water and madly rowed round the ship: as a gay-coloured hoist rose to the _Cryptic’s_ yardarm: “Destroyer will close at once. Wish to speak by semaphore.” Then on the bridge semaphore itself: “Have been trying to attract your attention last half hour. Send commanding officer aboard at once.”