threes the remainder of the hosts returned
from the upper-deck.

"Why aren't they all wet if they've come from the bottom of the sea?"
demanded Freckles the materialist. "Why isn't Father Christmas's
brother wet?"

They looked round in vain. Father Christmas's brother had vanished.

At that moment the Captain entered and sought his wife's eye. For a
few moments they conferred in an undertone; then she laughed, that
clear confident laugh of hers with which they had shared so many of
life's perplexities.

"Children!" she cried, "listen! Here's an adventure! We've all got to
sleep on board to-night!"

"Oh, mummie!" gasped Georgina with rapture, "how _lovely_!" This was a
party, and no mistake. "Can I sleep in Mr. Mainwaring's cabin?"

"And can I sleep in Mr. Standish's cabin?" echoed Jane earnestly. "And
we needn't go to bed for hours and hours, need we?" chimed in Cornelius
James.

"Where are they to sleep?" asked the Captain's wife, turning to the
Torpedo Lieutenant with laughter still in her eyes. "I never thought
of that. One always has spare rooms in a house, but a battleship is so
different. . . ."

"It's all right," he replied. "I've arranged all that. There are a
lot of people ashore: the children can use their cabins, and some of us
can sling in cots for the night. They'll have to wear our
pyjamas. . . . But I don't know about baths----"

"I think they must have plenary absolution from the tub to-night." She
glanced at the tiny watch at her wrist. "Now then, children, half an
hour before bed time: one good romp. What shall we play?"

"Oranges and lemons," said Georgina promptly, and seized the
Indiarubber Man's hand.

"I don't know the words," replied her partner plaintively; "I only
'knows the toon,'" as the leadsman said to the Navigator.

So the children supplied the words to the men's bass accompaniment; the
Captain and his wife linked hands. The candle came to light them to
bed; the chopper came to chop off a head; and at the end a grand
tug-of-war terminated with two squealing heaps of humanity in miniature
subsiding on top of the Young Doctor and the A.P.

Then they played "Hunt the slipper," at which Torps, with his long
arms, greatly distinguished himself, and "Hide the thimble," at which
Double-O Gerrard, blinking through his glasses straight at the quarry
without seeing it, was hopelessly disgraced. "General Post" and "Kiss
in the Ring" followed, and quite suddenly t