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‘I–I–‘ Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.

‘When you’re wanted aft you’ll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,’ said Pyecroft amiably. ‘It’s clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.’

‘”You count ten,” he says.

‘”Very good, Boy Jones,” I says, “count ’em,” and I hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he passed, lying face down tryin’ to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. I ought to ‘ave killed him; because he began signalling–rapid and accurate–in a sou’westerly direction. Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.’s little pets take to signallin’. Make a note o’ that! Three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by Scouts–up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots! The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin’ ’em off his cap, was thanking Heaven he’d covered up the new paint-work with mats. An ‘eroic soul!’

‘Not a scratch on her body,’ said Leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds.

‘And Jules?’ said I.

‘Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him.

‘You told me to bring the mackintosh,’ Leggatt whispered to me.

‘And when I ‘ad ’em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off. Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn’t speaking the truth. Eddy said I was tryin’ to sneak into Portsmouth unobserved–unobserved mark you!–and join hands with the enemy. It trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin’ forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn’t count ten points to them in the fray, that they’d have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire–also in short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!’

Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. ‘That umpire,’ he said suddenly, ‘was our Mr. Morshed–a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already made and profited by, if I mistake not[7].’

[Footnote 7: ‘Their Lawful Occasions,’ Traffics and Discoveries.]

‘Oh, was the Navy in it too?’ I said; for I had read of wild doings occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy, Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.

‘The Navy was in it. I was the only one out of it–for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin’ winks at ‘im behind your goggles didn’t arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin’ him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered on the instant. I’ve never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. “Go and guard your blessed road,” he says to the Fratton Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed–“Pyecroft,” he says, still sotte voce, “what in Hong-Kong are you doing with this dun-coloured sampan?“

‘It was your Mr. Leggatt’s paint-protective matting which caught his eye. She did resemble a sampan, especially about the stern-works. At these remarks I naturally threw myself on ‘is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was quite pleased. “His car!” he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. “I owe ‘im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I’ll keep the car.”

‘Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting. Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce. It sufficed. Didn’t it suffice, Mr. Leggatt?’