‘As usual,’ he grumbled, ‘no bally water now, and I can’t see out of my eyes till I’ve had a wash.’ ‘My goodness, you do look a picture of a promising young officer,’ grinned Raymond, ‘and let me tell you, you wash far too often. None of the really classy people in submarines ever wash. When I was up the Marmora I didn’t wash for a month.’ ‘Nor since, either, I should imagine,’ retorted Seagrave. ‘This flippancy in one of tender years is very galling. You don’t follow my august example. Look at Boyd, for instance. Gets out of his bunk as if he were going to be Queen of the May.’ Between them they pushed in the lower bunk and hauled out a table flap, on which the meal was laid by the cook, who bore in the eggs and sausages with the air of one who has achieved a culinary triumph. ‘Just look at those sausages,’ said Seagrave sitting down. ‘They look as if they’d spent their palmier days on a cab rank.’ ‘You’ve been spoilt,’ replied the skipper. ‘You’ve been brought up on Service bangers, and now you think that our best Vienna sausages, provided by me at great personal expense, are beneath you.’ ‘I’d have been glad enough to see any sort of sausages when I was apprentice in a wind-jammer,’ put in Boyd. ‘Cracker hash was what we got. However, I don’t blame you. If I felt like you look, I don’t think I _could_ eat a fried egg.’ ‘A most appalling example of a youthful officer on his way to the bow-wows,’ put in Raymond. ‘Eighteen feet.’ The meal over, Seagrave went aft to look at his beloved motors and engines, while the captain and navigator consulted the chart. ‘Near enough to the land, I think,’ said Raymond; ‘we don’t know exactly where their minefields are. We’ll steer an opposite course till noon.’ ‘Very good, sir. Steer 236 deg., helmsman.’ ‘236 deg., sir,’ came the reply as the wheel went over, and a little later,-- ‘Course, sir?’ ‘All “Sir Garnet” in the engine-room,’ announced Seagrave, returning from his tour of inspection. ‘The batteries are still up to twelve twenty-five.’ Raymond nodded approval. ‘That’s the sort. Hard-working ‘Subs’ of boats a pace forward, march! One of our world’s workers, but died before attaining maturity. All the same this new battery of ours seems pretty good.’ ‘What always scares me,’ returned the other, ‘is shutting down the ventilators for diving. I know I shall forget it some day, and then we’ll have chlorine gas in the boat and be as cold as haddocks in about five minutes, like those poor beggars in “164.”’ ‘The day you feel that coming on, you want to let me know. Suicidal mania is not one of my deficiencies. You let me know beforehand and I’ll have you hanged, drawn, and quartered, and bits of you hung round the superstructure as a warning to others of the awful fate of ‘Subs’ who feel the first symptoms of incipient lunacy approaching.’ ‘What was it happened to “159” last trip, by the way?’ put in Boyd.